


Wickedness and Ruin

by pumpkinpeyes



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Abuse of Power, Alt-Right, Betrayal, Civil War Team Iron Man, Conservative Republicians, Dark fic, F/F, F/M, Grooming, Infantilism, M/M, Manipulation, Morality is not black and white and retribution should be gunmetal grey at best, Read the Disclaimer, Revenge, Steve Rogers becomes a villan, Steve Rogers is Not Captain America, Steve Rogers is a racist, Steve is a pathological sociopath at best and a narcissistic psychopath at worst, Team Tony For Life, Torture, Violent character death, When heroes stop pretending that violence and abuse should be met with peace love and understanding, White Power Movement, takes place just after CW and is a complete divergence thereon, this fic is purely for my own personal catharsis, you know...synonyms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-06-02 15:17:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19444108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pumpkinpeyes/pseuds/pumpkinpeyes
Summary: Civil War has left its mark. There is more to the world than the Avengers, Tony realizes, more to Steve Rogers than any of them could have possibly imagined; more than they could ever have dreamed. They've all been played for fools. In one of his darkest hours to date, Tony learns this. When Steve can no longer control the narrative the cowl comes off and he wears his true colors with pride. A False Idol, narcissistic and psychopathic, Steve sets the world ablaze with but one mission in mind. The Avengers becomes the Initiative it was intended to be. Tony amasses allies and works tirelessly to work towards the things that mean the most to him now: being a good father, protecting the innocent, training new heroes, righting wrongs, putting the final stop to Steven Grant Rogers, and saving the world from the Annihilation. A threat far beyond hope of defeat with traditional methods and war. A threat against mind and body before it swallows the world.





	1. Natasha and Tony: The Dismissal and Warning

**Author's Note:**

> This is the only disclaimer I will keep constant as I update chapters.
> 
> This fic is 100% for my own enjoyment and feelings. It's cathartic. Ever since CW, I've decided that I can no longer look at Steve Rogers as a hero. I disregard anything after CW and this whole story will be moving in a separate direction. I am fully aware that Steve Rogers was created by Jewish writers and this story is not disregarding that. This is a dark fic where Steve Rogers is corrupted. His actions aren't in defiance of his creators but as a completely different imagining of him through the lens of a psychopathic narcissist. He is a master manipulator in this story and will have strong connections with the Alt-Right, Conservative Republicans and the like, Supremacists, ect. He is a racist and a misogynist. Any triggering themes will be listed at the beginning of the chapters that contain them. Any comments by people that cannot read clearly-outlined tags and disclaimers will be treated as trolls. 
> 
> That being said, I hope that there are some that will enjoy this story. Strap in, kids.

Natasha had come back to the states and the compound to speak to Tony at not only great personal risk but to that of their host: T'Challa. To understand what happened in Siberia and why he wasn’t making an effort to bring any of them home, because while she made quips on more than one occasion to Tony about his ego, she knew differently. She was scared, truly and thoroughly, and felt pain in her chest that was new and dark like an omen carving itself into her heart, winding around it and burning, searing it to scar tissue like a flaming reminder. She'd burned plenty of people herself. The Black Widow and Natasha were separate and the same; she knew what cutting ties looked like. Being the one to do it felt different from having it done and she hoped more than she had really ever allowed herself to that this was not what she'd been fearing.

She walks through the familiar halls, the smell is the first thing that registers - something that you never notice about a space that you've lived in until you're gone for a long while and then come back. It's all concrete and sheet metal. Industrial but homey, because she can sense the subtle tones from the rooms she passes, can remember moments in each one with a hazy, bright nostalgia, nothing coherent; just scents, sounds, laughter, and flashes of moments taken lightly. She enters the main common area and sees him, Tony, alone, and realizes belatedly that while her reminiscing was filled with people, this place was not. His tablet is out and he’s working on some project with brow-furrowing concentration. It's painfully reminiscent of any other night before the news-dubbed Civil War and she realizes that she misses this vision of him now and can't help but hate herself for ever being upset with him for doing what was literally his job - something they all did, treating him like their own perosnal outfitter and bank account instead of a person with a very real, very important job. 

He knows she’s there and the lack of friendly greeting is a tell of how this conversation is going to go. She is not sure what she expected. The Widow is something that she has tried to distance herself from since she defected. It was a part of her but she wanted something else for herself. When she joined SHIELD and then the Avengers she was desperate for a new name. Something different that was separate. That dark place, that red room, gave her the skills she had but keeping the name never felt right. But she has had this hair-raising, nerve-wracking feeling that her newly crafted persona was just that. No steps forward, just a step to the side, and that terrified her. Every moment spent with the Avengers had her believing herself, that she had changed, that this was better and she could do more than hurt. But the set of Tony's jaw as she rounds the couch and the harsh line of his shoulders tells her everything she's been too caught up in herself to notice - or maybe the right phrasing was that she'd never cared - and now that she did, now that she had her moment of clarity, she saw it now. So she moves to the opposite end of the couch and sits, waiting for him to reach a stopping point and look at her. 

'Please, Tony, look at me.' She wishes, fervent like a child at their bedroom window wishing upon a star.

The silence stretches on for minutes that feel like hours. She has an impeccable internal clock. She has had to count seconds as they pass more times than she cares to recall. Just how long it takes to strangle the life out of someone. How long her best friend's hands clawed at the hands she had gripped around her throat when she was left in that frigid tundra with the other girls, fighting for the supplies that would only last one. How long it took for a Widow's Bite to wear off. Exactly how many seconds it took to cauterize a gunshot wound with a clothing iron and how long the sting and bright, blinding burn whites out your vision. She knew that it took her mere seconds, less than a minute, to ever deliberate a kill. But this was akin to torture. Much like walking up the steps to a platform to be hung before the town for your crimes. 

“You know,” He finally says, saving his progress and setting his pad to the side, “I don't blame the spy tactics, the espionage, the manipulation - anything they taught you, anything that they made you. I blame the you that was given a second chance, that was turned heroine from assassin. At this point, you should have learned better. Your experience and your mistakes should have shaped a different response. You should have been able to trust me, to know that I was genuine. Instead, like every other idiot on our team, you flipped and followed Rogers." He takes a deep rattling breath that Natasha's sharp hearing pinpoints and she doesn't dare interrupt. "That isn’t my ego - it’s yours. You aren’t even half the spy I thought you were. Good luck finding someone else to clean up your messes. Hell knows I ain’t doing shit for any of you anymore. So go on and scuttle back to the gilded cage whence you came like the scared little spider that you are. I have little left to say to you and what I do have to give you is the last bit of nicety you will ever receive from me.”

“Tony,” Natasha pleaded, voice broken and visibly upset. Tony didn’t trust it and she could tell. She could see that and it killed her because - to be honest with herself - this was probably the first time she'd felt truly upset and broken. She'd brushed so many things off in the past and bottled hurt down and swallowed it like bile.

“No.” He cuts her off. “You lost that privilege the moment you decided to let them on to my ship. You lost that when I had to watch Rhodey fall. When you told me that it was my ego and my fault that things devolved the way they did. It’s Mr. Stark for you from now on, Ms. Romanoff.”

Natasha is cut at this point, deep and down to the bone; gushing blood and pearly white. She’s spent a lot of her time as a SHIELD agent shaping her view of the world and trying desperately to understand how healthy, close relationships worked. Learning that people are complex and that trust is so hardly won and the easiest to lose. Even with her experience with the Avengers and the life they had together she still managed to firebomb the friendship she’d had with someone that had accepted her. And was that not the kick in the teeth? That she had made a choice to follow Steve over staying loyal. Was it that she didn't truly know how to be loyal or just that loyalty to her had always been to herself and her own survival? Had she been tricked by Steve and their close conversation where he had told her exactly what she'd always wanted to hear? To know that someone trusted her.

She’d let Roger’s despairing comments on Tony shape her view like playground, childish, obstinate and hardheaded preconceptions. There was no question when Fury told her exactly who Tony was and she accepted it as gospel. For someone trained to play off of her instincts and correctly analyze her marks, she had missed the target entirely. And sure, Tony had his moments, but she had allowed the feelings of others and their demonizing of him to shape her own opinions like a fool. Desperate to keep her perceived friends close and agree with their opinions because it was easier to go along with that rather than put in the work to know Tony as more than a benefactor. She had gone from one extreme to the other. From cold and calculating to easily influenced and controlled.

“Please,” She tries, desperate and still painfully hopeful, as if saying it enough would change all of her transgressions, “please. You don’t think I regret those things? You don’t think I know that I played the wrong side? I should have been there for you, in Siberia to support you and-”

Tony raises a hand and actually scoffs, laughing hollowly and disbelieving, and it shocks her to hear that from him. She had never really heard that one way or another in any time before now. This derision was something she'd only ever seen him use against others. Like a child hearing from their parent the first time that they're actually disappointing in them. Like a lover learning that the love of their life was thoroughly done, past the point of caring to fix a problem and washing their hands of them instead. That scoff was a nail in the coffin, one that felt like it was the last one, the final hammer blow that no one had bothered or cared to hear until they were already trapped.

“I didn’t want you in Siberia. I didn’t want any of you, not at the end.” And that’s a slap in the face she hadn’t predicted. Much like jumping in ice cold water too early in the summer for it to be anything more than freezing. Miscalculation. “Don’t you dare talk to be about sides, Romanoff. I wasn’t on a side. I was on what I thought was a team. People that, even when blamed for something that wasn’t even my own design, even when Ultron tore lives apart, I was still thrown under the bus and replaced by a literal willing Hydra operative." He laughs and it's hollow and genuine at the same time, almost as if he's been broken but finds it funny. The laugh of someone who was wronged for the last time. "You’re right. You played the wrong side. I just didn’t know there were sides to be played. Tell me,” he asks, suddenly looking past his years and so tired that Natasha feels a pang in her chest, “did anyone on your side actual read the damn thing? Did any of them think once to talk to me? To discus it without assuming? Are all of you so stupid to think that a piece of legislation is set in stone when enforced? You followed a man who was a cocktail ice cube for more years than he is old who’s biggest concern in assimilating to the new world was to listen to music he missed and watch I Love Lucy?”

“I," she tries and it's a false start, "Steve has his flaws and he never made much of an effort but he made good points.”

Tony laughs and Natasha knows, knew even as it left her mouth, that she was grasping at straws. His laugh is hearty and breathless, “”Made good points?” Christ, Romanoff, what points? Name one. Name a singular point that he made that he actually backed for people other than his Murder Bestie. Go on, I’ll wait. I’ll entertain this and give you more time than you deserve.”

Natasha’s face twisted and thought back forcing herself to think objectively. The most famous of Steve’s arguments had been that the safest hands were our own. But that wasn't true, was it? How many times had they caused more harm then good? How many times in history alone was it proven that power left unchecked resulted in dictatorships, negligence, and power imbalances. Did Steve really mean that from the point of view he argued? Was that just a ploy so that he could finally bring Barnes home without worrying that he’d be immediately taken into custody? Did Steve argue for personal accountability because he had a history of ignoring commands of superior officers constantly in favor of doing what he wanted? Tony was constantly labeled as a loose canon, irresponsible and less than noble but have any of his actions after Stane really been indicative of that fact? In terms of track records, who was the more likely between Tony and Steve to follow the law?

Had Steve just always lucked out when it came to disobeying orders because the results were favorable? Why was Steve so focused on being held accountable to no one while they terrorized other countries and their civilians without asking and care? Was there really only one driving force for Steve? His single-minded focus on running any and every operation and despairing anyone who deviated from his own command. Was that a leader or someone abusing their authority? Natasha was coming to a realization that made her pale, the blood leaving her face fast enough that she could feel it, like she was being washed with horror of understanding. 

“I can tell you’re deep in thought, and time is actually a pretty big deal for me and Rhodey’s legs won’t build themselves, so here’s what I’m going to do:” Tony takes an old phone out of his pocket and hands it to Natasha. It's old and something that she never thought he would willingly have in his possession. “This sad old relic was given to be by Rogers, rather, was sent to me. I do not want it. I’d have returned his hilarious letter it came with but I gave it to dummy for some highly-cathartic blender fun.”

Natasha accepted the phone numbly, noting that he hadn’t even bothered to charge the thing. Her fingers curled around it and she looked up at Tony. His face was difficult to discipher. He looked both amused and deeply hurt. Almost as if humor was the singular outlet he’d let her see for his pain. And that was alarming all on its own. Tony was a celebrity and knew how to hide anything he wanted from anyone he wished. But he was letting her see this, almost like a lesson, or maybe even just past caring about how he appeared around her. 

“Now,” Tony continued, sounding bored while pulling out a manila envelope from the inside of his dark red, assuredly expensive, coat jacket. It was very befitting of the situation, red that was almost brown like drying blood, “that phone will not be able to reach me at any number any of you knew. You should always change the locks, as it were, when a breakup goes badly. As in diminished life expectancy badly.” 

Now, that’s news to Natasha. She knew Siberia went south but her knowledge of exactly what happened was severely limited to what Steve was willing to share, and Natasha can tell a lie. And omission is still a lie. She curses herself for deciding that Steve's careful retelling was because it was emotional. She hadn't pressed because emotion was for children, something she'd always told herself and others, but never seemed to keep in check enough. She'd trusted him and let him have his vague explanations.

She still feels the need to ask, “What do you mean?”

Tony tsks, “Now, now, wait until I’ve finished and you may find questions answered.” He tosses the folder at her, unwilling to even risk casual contact with her hand. “As I was saying, you can’t call me at all. I know your aliases, I know where you all are vacationing, and I know the country code. Aside from T’Challa’s own personal, King Kitty line, none of you are going to be able to bother me with your inane chatter again." He smirks and looks very happy with himself and Natasha gets that same hair-raising feeling again, "However, because I’m so nice, there are several phone numbers programmed into that relic. Namely: Clint’s wife, Scott’s Ex-wife and his, possibly Ex, girlfriend, as well as Wilson’s mother. They are free to call them. It should be noted that these numbers have been added with their permission and they all reserve the right to ignore any calls made to them. In fact, at any point they don’t want to hear from them again, they know they can contact me and I will personally see to it to cut all contact. Happily.”

“And how are they supposed to know you didn’t cut it just to punish them?” Natasha asks, no real venom, just legitimate curiosity because she knows if - and given she's honest with herself, when - that contact is cut that they can't blame Tony.

Tony shrugs, “I’m sure they’ll make that apparent themselves. Now, that envelope you have that is just packed and rife with legal forms. And while the current Mrs. Barton still carries that last name, she wont for much longer.” Natasha flinches at that, mind reeling, and Tony continues without a single ounce of sympathy. “Among those documents you all will find, in no particular order: Divorce papers for Mr. Barton - upon which if he doesn’t sign the case will be tried in absentia considering he’s a wanted man and in hiding." He shrugs like this blow, that Clint's loss means nothing to him, "Others are all cases being brought against you and the Idiot Brigade for destruction and/or theft of SI property. These include but are not limited to: all gear made by yours truly, the falcon wings, Mr. Barton’s bow and arrows, your Widow Bites, garrote, etc., all of your coms and the Quinjet. Enclosed is also a lawsuit from Pym Industries for the coined ‘Ant Man’ suit. As well as an itemized list of all expenses paid by SI to the tracking down and finding of James Barnes without proper sign-off, effectively making those trips, with gas, housing, legal fees, and the like billable not just to Mr. Rogers but those involved in the pursuit of him. Not to mention the military’s dishonorable discharge of both Rogers and Wilson, stripping them of their titles and complete disavowal.”

Natasha finds herself holding her breath for a moment and grips the phone and the envelope with equal intensity, hands frozen like stone to halt any trembling, “Is that all?”

“Heavens, no.” Tony laughs, “Careful to not warp the paperwork, Ms. Romanoff. There’s also several filings on Mr. Rogers and Mr. Barnes for assault, attempted murder, murder, theft, breaking and entering - among others. For you, there’s corporate espionage, theft, misappropriation of SI property, and a court order with charges for violating the Accords. Mr. Barton is also facing charges for assault and breaking and entering. The assault charge, however is two-fold, mainly focused on Ms. Maximoff for sending Vision through twelve sub-terrain floors of the compound.”

Natasha is taken aback by this, “Is he hurt? Do those charges even count? He’s an android.”

“Funny that the main concern is whether or not it will stick because you don’t think he qualifies as a being that should have rights.” Tony looks angry now. Furious, really. “He’s been granted autonomy and accepted as a sentient life-form. And lets just say there are more people than those of us at SI that are furious that your little Hydra bitch not only is responsible for the corruption of Ultron, but, in turn, that of Sokovia, Johannesburg, and for incapacitating a droid that can not only feel pain and betrayal, but also has a toddler’s understanding of it. Safe to say that no amount of presidential pardon will touch her. Her life will end either at the hands of actual heroes or her own countrymen and women when she’s extradited there.”

“And?” Natasha presses, because her one question has yet to be answered, “Siberia?”

Tony's lips thin at that and his hand reaches up to his chest without thought, and Natasha can see him tracing where the arc reactor should be. It’s hard to tell through his suit and what she assumes is body armor but she wonders if the slight glow is a trick of her mind. If it really is back, if he's resorted to this, more happened than a simple disagreement. 

“There was video taken in Siberia. It may have been an abandoned base but that doesn’t mean it was without power or a motion activated security system. Here,” he digs through his jacket again and tosses a thumb drive at her. She catches it automatically and fingers the plain silver casing. Probably the last thing with an SI logo she’ll ever be given. “This is a collection of the videos taken there. It’s grainy but what do you expect? However, what isn’t distorted by old technology is my body camera footage as well as the full video showing James Barnes murdering my parents on a country road for the serum my father was transporting." 

It’s said with such flippancy that the gravity of it escapes Natasha for a moment. She straightens, mouth gaping while her focus singles in to rest on the thumb drive in her hand. Practically weightless but heavy with implication. Steve did not mention that. As far as he’s concerned, Tony came and instigated a fight, forcing them to flee. She’s incensed suddenly and so thoroughly that she isn’t quite sure what expression her face is trying to make. She tries to school it to a neutral mask but now she’s the one that’s been betrayed and lied to. But she knows that she can't. There is no neutral mask. There is no Widow within her at this moment to help her. So she knows full an well that her face has twisted into something sour, eyes burning with tears or anger, possibly both.

“Steve didn’t mention any of that.” She manages. 

Tony clicks his tongue and shrugs, like this is something he knew first hand, “I can’t say I’m surprised. There’s a lot Steve likes to keep to himself. I’m starting to think is All-American-Good-Boy routine is just that: practiced.” Tony actually turns to face her now, making aggressive eye contact, sporting a pained smirk. She can see it now - the artfully done makeup, the bulge of wrappings beneath his flawless suit, the telltale yet subtle twitch in pain that crosses his face when he turns. The eye contact is the most chilling thing by far. Tony has soft spots. The people his weapons killed or harmed, children, his AIs, the people he calls family, so many things that for someone so supposedly aloof and distant can't help but be, for lack of a better term, fatherly. But this, this stare, the hard look in his eyes is anything but. There is no love left there, no trust, no care, nothing but resolve and maybe even disdain.

“I’m going to save you the trouble of reading my medical reports from when I was rescued from Siberia after being legally dead for three minutes while FRIDAY tried to revive me.” That line alone provokes the now familiar burning of tears again and the concerned furrow of her brows. “Funny that you look so worried. I didn’t think you thought your acting could fool me anymore.”

“Tony, I’m not-” She tries, and even makes a move to reach out, truly and wholly shattered. Overwhelmed with this new feeling; being spurned, being dismissed and feeling his distrust like palpable waves.

“Ah ah ah,” Tony admonishes, moving back against the arm of the couch, calculated to be casual but an obvious move to be out of her reach. “It’s Mr. Stark, Ms. Romanoff. I’m telling you this because I want to remember your face when you hear it because I wont be afforded the opportunity to see the horror reflected on everyone else’s when you show them those videos and reveal Rogers to be the single-minded, dangerous, self-serving coward he is." He smiles at this, humorless but dark, and Natasha knows she deserves this. "Now, in no particular order of severity: a crushed sternum - which, yes, damaged my heart and sent shrapnel from my own suit into my body, shredding more of my heart and necessitating the implantation of another arc reactor. Eight broken ribs, severe internal bleeding - leading to the loss of nearly half of my blood volume. A fractured skull resulting in brain swelling that almost killed me. Then the hypothermia from being brutally beaten, my suit open to the elements both through my helmet and the Captain America shield-esque hole in the suit’s chest."

He takes a deep breath again, rattling just like before, and rubs his chest in a moment that makes him look just as fragile as he is. He's lost for a moment in thought, possibly reliving those moments and Natasha is trying her best not to imagine them. Not to picture the attack and subsequent painful surgeries and PTSD. 

He continues, "This lost me skin, resulting in several skin grafts to my chest and face. The removal of my right outer ear. The loss of my nose, part of my lips, and even a few fingers and toes because my suit was out of commission and the harsh Siberian Tundra plus a metal coffin does not a warm person make. I was unconscious, legally dead at one point, and left in freezing cold, immobilized in a dead metal coffin for hours. The first handful or so spent in panic and pain while I tried to use the small amount of back up power I had to send a distress signal and waited for hours for help to come.”

“I didn’t know.” Is all she could say and the moment it leaves her mouth she knows it doesn't matter.

Tony shrugs, “And I didn’t know if you all decided that life would be easier if I just died there so that you could all trick the country into letting you all back without so much as a slap on the wrist while Rogers lied his way into Pepper’s good graces to siphon as much money as you all could until she learned about what you really did.”

Natasha is close to her tears overtaking her and actually spilling and she knows that Tony wouldn’t believe them, “I told you that I was sorry. That I should have been there.”

“And yet here we are.” Tony says, gesturing with his arms as much as he can without hurting himself too much. “Better without you and glad that I was betrayed by all of you when I was because at least now I know. I’d rather experience it all again then let a single one of you profit off of me another fucking day.”

“So this is the end, is it?” Natasha asks, plaintive. “This is a goodbye?”

“No.” Tony says and for that split second Natasha is hopeful, but he continues, “This is a Stay the Fuck Away From Me. Goodbye is for friends. I don’t want to hear about any of you ever contacting anyone I know. No Pepper, no Rhodey, no Vision, and so on. Now, I’m giving you an hour head-start, because I’m nice like that. Get the fuck out of my compound and when you go slinking back to the other criminals you risked everything for, know that I will be watching every move you make.”

Natasha’s blood runs cold and she begins to sweat. Because she knows the kind of things Tony’s capable of and how ruthless he can be. That she and everyone else had made a grave error, that they all had been operating under the assumption that Tony, while difficult and prickly, had an endless fount of patience and forgiveness. That most others who have crossed him and the ones he loves aren’t alive anymore. This wasn't just about breaking laws, this wasn't just about the Accords, this was about trust and it's loss. This is what it looks and feels like to push someone who is normally so open with his generosity and affection to their limit, to push them over that last bit. Off the precipice and into cold-blooded, uncaring, unflinching determination to see your own personal ruin.

She’s backing away from the couch, eyeing Tony and her exits when he speaks one more time, “I may have lost JARVIS, but make no mistake, FRIDAY is more ruthless than he was, and is newer. She will follow you and every move you make. Do anything remotely close to harming me and mine and she will employ every bit of her server farms at her disposal to corner you and orchestrate your demise and the demise of all the other Rogues.” He tilts his head to the side and calmly asks, “Right, FRIDAY?”

“Right, Sir.” Is the firm, cold and unyielding reply. 

Natasha flees. Heart broken, powered on fear and adrenaline, clutching the drive, phone, and paperwork like a life line while FRIDAY plays her increasing, thudding heartbeat back to her - to mock and intimidate, while she barrels her way out of the building and into the Wakandan jet on the lawn. 

Tony follows her out, letting out a hearty laugh and hollering about keeping an eye on the news while the door hisses closed behind her and Natasha reels at the vindictive sound of it. She’s never been truly afraid of much. Maybe the Hulk the first time they met. Maybe back when surgery was forced upon her. Maybe when she knew that Clint would be one of the few who could kill her but had chosen to bring her in instead. Maybe when she first changed sides and was terrified to lose the security she’d secured for herself and the freedom to make her own choices. But she didn’t think anything could truly top this. Because as much as everything had shaped her up to this point, she was still fallible, and she had made a gross miscalculation. Tony Stark was a blessing and a curse. She just hadn’t figured out in time the lengths to which he would exact his vengeance. She had no doubt in her mind that the Gilded Cage T’Challa had afforded them was still a prison, it was still better than the prison Tony had erected. 

Because Tony’s didn’t extend from one facility or even one country. She was confident that there wasn’t a single place on Earth that Tony couldn’t keep his eye on. And if Jarvis was indicative of exactly how loyal his AIs were, FRIDAY was born into this war and was far more creative in her vengeance for her creator. A force to be reckoned with and feared. An entity without a physical body and very little limitation, if any. 

If the cackling laughter through the Wakandan sound system was anything to go by.

The worst part of it all, the part that had true and honest tears clouding her vision as she finally allowed them to fall, was that Natasha’s defect to Roger’s side had been in an effort to keep the team together by keeping them all from killing each other. She’d been worried about Tony’s firepower when she should have been worried about Steve’s narcissism. There were red flags. There were signs. Steve would sacrifice civilians and his own team members if it meant James Barnes was in his grasp. 

The truth is that Steve Rogers was a sociopath at best and a complete psychopath with delusions of grandeur at worst. 

Which meant that handling this new information and sharing it with the team back in Wakanda would be potentially dangerous. Because Natasha knew better than most that when someone with sociopathy of any kind was challenged that the chances of it being responded to with overt violence and aggressive manipulation was not just probable, but more likely than not. 

Natasha frantically taps out along the control panel to signal a transmission to T’Challa, praying to anyone listening that he pick up and hear her out. Because this type of damage required the kind of control and forethought, the kind of preparedness that she hadn’t made possible yet. And there was no telling exactly what Steve would do if he was exposed on national television in a room of people who thought he was as close to a morally upright God-’Ol-Boy that they thought he was. This wasn’t just about letting the truth out. This was about not letting Steve control the narrative, and better yet, harm those that will turn on him.

“Ms. Romanoff,” Ayo answers, “is there something terribly pressing that you couldn’t save for your return?”

Natasha is shaking, hands flexing to white-knuckled, painful grip, fingernails cutting half-moons into the palms of her hands. She feels fear, real fear, the type that hollows you out and fills you with dark, twisting shadow and doubt. 

“This is a matter of safety. I have information on Steve Rogers and it’s going to be on the national news. Broadcast to anywhere that has news, that includes Wakanda. And if Steve and the others see it before we can control that environment I am certain that Steve will harm not just your other prisoners, but as much of the Palace staff as he can.”

Ayo is silent for a moment and she itches at the seconds ticking by like it’s some kind of countdown to a bomb she can’t defuse, just divert.

“I have informed His Majesty. I have taken over the control of the jet you are on and you will be taken straight to our hanger. I’ve suspended the flow of information to your compatriots and locked down their side of the palace.” A pause and hushed tones, and then another voice takes over, angry and demanding - T’Challa, “Exactly what has been done for you to question the safety of my people?”

“Steve Rogers, your Majesty.”

“And your proof?”

Natasha fingers the drive, “I have a USB with video surveillance of the altercation between Rogers and Barnes against Tony Stark. Along with a catalog of his injuries and an incriminating video if James Barnes murdering both of Tony’s parents as the Winter Soldier.”

Icy silence, then, distant like he’s turned to speak to someone else, “Wake Mr. Barnes up.”


	2. The Veil is Lifted: True Colors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things to know:
> 
> There are old, early 1900s slurs for black people as well as discriminatory language for women and Russians. These are not my own opinions but are used in the story by a character already warned as racist as well as from another character recalling slurs they've been called as well.

Waking up James Barnes is a slow process and she tries to not equate it to the thawing of meat. It's slow enough that the warning she gave was intended to start the process as early as possible but fast enough that, she hopes, he'll be awake and coherent in time to see the truth. Maybe there is a veil there that hasn't been quite lifted yet, a smoke screen that Steve used on Barnes just the same as he used on the rest of the world. Maybe this would be a moment where Steve would buckle, if Barnes distanced himself from this, from Steve, would that curtail his power? Yes, waking him and that process should be complete by the time the jet makes it back to Wakanda. She’s not sure how to handle everyone at once or even what to lead with. The paperwork detailing divorce, criminal lawsuits, extradition, and the crushing sadness or the incriminating video that’s sure to break what little camaraderie they have left? What is worse? Which is the bad news and the even worse news? The problem here is that without Barnes awake, without that one person that she hopes Steve may just listen to, there are too many variables. How far does this web reach and to what end does it unravel? 

Yes, waking Barnes is the best option. He's the constant, the one thing that isn't up to chance. She can't trust any of her fellow prisoners not to turn and side with Steve again. But she's heard Barnes speak, she's been there, she knows. Being used and molded, feeling like you were you and weren't simultaneously. Disassociated and confused. Empty but brimming with turmoil and rot. Having that weapon part of yourself become it's own entity. Feeling like you had no choice but to let it take over because that meant less pain, less fear, just...less. But Natasha was more herself now than she'd ever been. The Black Widow lurks, uncaring and unfeeling, tempting her with dissonance and emotional distance. A siren's call to sink beneath the waves and just float. That is a battle she's fought since she defected. That is a battle that she knows haunts Barnes. Which is why her confidence in him is so strong. Because even though she's sure that it would be easiest to be the weapon, both of them want more - and Barnes was never complicit. He always fought, he always remembered, and he's always been filled with regret. 

She hopes beyond hope that she's right. There's no reason to insinuate that Barnes is anything like Rogers. Centuries have proven that people have aligned themselves with evil people before, unknowingly. Families of serial killers, women being tricked into marrying their rapists, drug and arms dealers, human trafficking rings and the like. She's decided, Natasha feels like the videos should be played first. That way when the paperwork is introduced it solidifies the reality. As much as it kills her, as awful as it is that this will definitely break them all and scatter their friendship to the wind like ashes dumped at sea, she knows that the only other option is hearing it second-hand through every news channel they receive. She feels like it would be less likely for Steve to deny his role if Natasha is the one who supplies it. Because, and this comes to her as a complete and utter shock to her system, this is true betrayal. Steve and his actions, pulling the wool over everyone's eyes, watching the hand that distracts while the other one pulls off the trick. She's lost in the hole, she doesn't know if she should blame herself for not seeing it or if she should blame Steve for orchestrating.

Who is to blame, then, when you stumble out of the cave and find that the world is more and different than you had been led to believe? Is that personal responsibility or is it the sole fault of the man behind the curtain? 

When the ship lands in the hangar a group of the King’s personal guard approach with T’challa at the head, face stern and hands firmly clasped behind his back like the warrior King he is, steps heavy and sure. The USB has been so tightly gripped in her hand that it has actually started to sweat. The folder is tucked under her arm and feels heavier than it is. As if the weight of her sins and the sins of this so-called team lie within it. That answers her question, doesn't it? It is all about personal responsibility. It is your duty to fight, to question, to always doubt; people are accountable for their beliefs and their understanding of the world they are in. Steve has done grievous wrong but they were the ones to jump off the cliff at his command like lemmings. 

“Would you like to explain to me why I have my palace on lock-down for Steve Rogers, Ms. Romanoff?” T'Challa is to the point and his face is strained. Not with pain or annoyance but with regret. He's young, younger than Natasha and while he is proving himself to be a good King and more than capable to uphold his title as the Black Panther, he's still not nearly as well-versed as he needs to be. Especially on the world's stage. Wakanda is just now beginning to come out of their self-imposed hiding and starting to interact with the world at large with no misleading of their wealth. Both of power and technology. And while his father, T'Chaka, was beloved by his country and his family he had not done much until the end to teach T'Challa about the world and its policies. He'd been blinded by fury and grief when his father had died and now he found himself housing international fugitives and keeping one on ice while the world boiled over with its own pain and wrath to find and hold those accountable.

She knew he regretted this and that the situation he found himself in was a quagmire. If he rescinds, he is no longer a man of his word - though she doesn't believe anyone but the Rogues and a few extremists would see it that way. If he keeps his promise, though, he risks not only the wrath of the world but that of his own countrymen and women. If there was anything that Natasha was absolutely certain of when it came to the man in front of her was that he loved his country and his people more than anything and that was the great war within him. That violent game of tug-o-war between righting the wrong of hunting a man not guilty of his father's death and making sure that his people didn't suffer his mistakes. 

Natasha closes her eyes for a moment, defeat spelled out in the slumped line of her shoulders and a shaky breath exhaled in hopes to center her and keep the rolling nausea in her stomach at bay. Is this what anxiety is? This deep, dark and twisted thing that makes her whole body feel electric and numb at the same time. The feeling of acid forcing its way up her throat, burning a path to her tongue, heavy with panic and tasting like blood - iron and rust. She feels like throwing up, a gag reflex long ago trained down to nothing comes back with a vengeance, intent to make her cough with the acrid taste of bile for lack of anything in her stomach. 

“I think it would be best," she swallows down that feeling and tries to maintain eye contact, "your Highness, if you and your guard were present when I reveal this to the others. There isn’t really anything to be said or done to lessen this blow. I do, however, wish that I hadn’t had a role in what amounts to deceit and the manipulation of the crown.”

T’Challa gives her a sharp look, one that rings with disapproval - or distaste, “You are not inspiring sympathy, Ms. Romanoff.”

“And I am not asking for it, your Highness.” Natasha takes a deep breath and steps forward. She pretends not to notice his guard shifting with her, muscles tense and eyes sharp, “I feel like we need to do this as soon as possible and without interruption. I’ve been duped, just like you have, and I don’t believe we should give Steve Rogers the chance to flip this story to his benefit. I also believe that we should do this with Barnes present. He, above all, deserves to see this as it plays out. If you had any desire to help Barnes, this would be one of the best ways to do it.”

“You believe him to be well enough for this? Do you think that coming out of cryostasis so quickly only to be delivered this in hand is in his best interest?" T'Challa brings up a good point, one in which she had gone to great lengths to consider on her way back. The problem was this: he deserved to know. Given her own feelings on the matter and her experience being a weapon, being lied to and used, she feels like this is the first real kindness Barnes will be afforded since he was saved from Hydra's claws. She tells this much to T'Challa.

"Very well.” T’Challa nods. “You will follow behind us. Please hand over the evidence to be played.”

Natasha acquiesces with no protest and follows behind the group with a sense of detached anxiety. A part of her wishes that this was a bad dream and she wants so desperately to wake up. She hopes, in vain, that she'd simply fallen asleep on the ride to the states, to Tony, and she was about to wake up to a different world. She had thought that Steve and she had both grown close recently. She wishes now that giving him that folder with every credible piece of information on the Winter Soldier hadn’t happened. That she’d seen Steve’s actions for what they really were: a desperate attempt to leave the future he’d been woken into in order to relive as much as his past as possible. There has never been a case in history in which it has ever been healthy to dwell on the past. There isn't a world were a person's unwillingness to move with the times was positive. 

She thinks now that maybe, just maybe, the biggest ego had always been Steve. Something that she should have put together when she’d seen his folder. The many attempts to join the US army under false names while trying to fool recruiters. His desperate need to be seen as a hero and be with his best friend - the only person that put up with him - because that was more important than the lives of other army personnel that would depend on him to cover them and save their lives if need be. The fact that his own mother had died as a result of his neglect, his unwillingness to take care of himself. He'd watched her work herself to a literal death, tuberculosis and plain exhaustion. Had he ever even mentioned her? She tried as she might to remember a single instance in which he had spared even one thought for his mother. Any singular moment spent looking up to see if she was still where she had been buried. Did he ever think to care? Had he even then, when she'd died? 

Natasha realizes it is too late to come to this conclusion. That she’d been just as enamored with the idea of Captain America as every other fool. Because, in reality, this was a selfish boy who picked fights, put his mother into debt with his hospital bills and eventually to an early death, the boy who refused to take no as an answer and openly snubbed the home-front war effort because it wasn’t glamorous and heroic enough. His blatant disregard and snobbish ideals that doing work back home wasn't good enough, didn't matter. All because he didn't see himself exalted there. He didn't see those men and women as heroes. 

Realizing that he had no real training. No actual tactical experience past throwing bodies at a problem and using his serum-laced body as evidence enough that he could conquer anything. Fear gripped her when she looked back to that. Even when aliens first came through that portal in New York, what was his real purpose? What had been hers? They picked off stragglers. He tried to lead the fight but the real heavy hitters - Hulk, Iron Man, Thor - brought down the most of them. Tony, with his genius and quick-thinking, his ability to solve complex equations in his head and read probability should have made him the lead. But no. Captain America was the Golden Boy. But who had really been the one to put him in that position?

Like fighting Red Skull was only ever possible with Captain America leading the charge. Like the whole war was only won when Steven Grant Rogers stepped onto the playing field. Completely disregarding the fact that the US at the time had waited to join the effort until they were provoked, until they benefited, trotting Captain America out to troops drafted, scared, shell-shocked and broken with more training then Steve had ever had.

“This is truly bothering you, is it not?” T’Challa asks, softly and almost caring, and she soaks it up like it's the last bit of kindness she expects to have again.

Natasha realizes that they’ve reached the doors to their wing of the palace and that she’s been so absorbed in her light-bulb moment and disillusionment that she’s caught off guard for once. She can’t find it within herself to be bothered by this blunder. She feels well and truly lost, hopeless, and that tight ball of anxiety is hardening into something worse; part resolve, part heart-thudding and quickening panic, and part the beginning of what she imagines could be a permanent disassociative state. They've come to a halt, for a small moment, and she breathes deep, thankful for the time to steel herself. 

“I always imagined, hoped, prayed, whatever I could that one day I would escape the red room and their hold over me so that I could find a family for myself and have a purpose. To be part of something good that wasn’t tainted. To be seen as a hero, reformed and driven to do right by people and fight against those whose interests lie in just themselves and their own selfish, destructive, and violent actions.” She takes a deep, watery breath and tries to blink back tears. Close to crying for the second time in a day, something that she would have hated herself for once, “I have spent so much of my life holding these hopes as close to my heart as possible. And when I finally had it, I fell victim to a classic blunder: trusting blindly. It didn’t seem like something that could dissolve so easily. I didn’t think that once I’d found that one thing - family - that anyone other than myself could ruin it. But here I am.”

Natasha didn’t even pretend that T’Challa’s look was exclusively sympathetic. She could see that slight twist to his mouth and she had to agree, feels her lips mimic his, because even though Steve caused this, even though he is the enemy here, she's played a hand in her own destruction.

“I understand your heartbreak and I wont pretend to scold you and point out your wrong-doings. You seem to have a firm grasp on that yourself. But I must tell you that while there is darkness, eventually, light is borne. Darkness is only such because of an absence of light, not because it doesn’t exist at all.” 

Natasha laughs, self-deprecatingly and hollow, “I think my problem is that I had that light and was convinced to snuff it out anyway.”

T’Challa nods to her once, conceding, and then gestures to Ayo, “If you would, open the door for us. I believe we have a problem to solve.”

To say that it was already mildly tense would be an understatement. Everyone was gathered in the sitting area already, chatter between themselves silenced as soon as the King and his guard entered, Natasha taking up the rear with the envelope in hand trying her best not to twist it in anxiousness. They look just as they did when she'd left. Clint has been a glowering, spiteful thing since he came out of retirement. She knew that there was a small part of him that knew that he'd gotten himself in this spot but blaming Tony was so much easier to swallow. She didn't even bother looking at Wanda, done with listening to her whining and self-important, selfish tirades about how Tony was akin, if not in reality, the Devil and the source of all her problems. She never forgave Steve for letting her onto the team, forcing Bruce and Tony off. She had her own, admittedly vindictive, plan to let Barnes know exactly what kind of person Steve had him around. 

Sam was stoic, steadfast on the outside but a sea of uncertainty on the inside. She felt for him, she truly did, because it was Steve and her both who had dragged him into this mess back when SHIELD was outed as being infiltrated by HYDRA. Sam's whole life was centered around his life as an Air Force Man and the disavowal in the packet beneath her arm for him was one of the few that seemed to weigh the most. He lost so much to the Air Force and depended on it as a way to live as a civilian and help other veterans. This would tear him apart and she hated Steve for it. Another great example of the level of selfish, self-serving behavior Steve had. As for Ant Man, she didn't know him well, which made her just as sad for him. If any one of them deserved this the most, other than Steve, it was her.

“T’Challa,” Steve starts, already disrespectful, constantly refusing to use his title, “is there a reason why we can’t use any of the televisions or the tablets you gave us?”

Ayo bristles and T’Challa discreetly waves her down, “That is 'King' T’Challa or Your Majesty, Mr. Rogers. As it has been indicated many times. Your failure to respect this does very little to endear you to me, my guards, or my staff."

Steve’s mouth twists and ignores the subtle command, looking authoritative and like a child was talking back to him, “That doesn’t answer the question.”

“Sit down, Steve.” Natasha barks, suddenly so angry she can barely keep the full power of the venom and bile she feels bubbling in her stomach rising up to spill out of her mouth. It's a close thing. This abject need to take him down bodily, quickly. There isn't a second wasted in imagining killing him where he stands. Even the Widow rises up in her, furious at his hand in her destruction, and she has to clench her hands to white-knuckled, painful fists just to hold herself together. “Shut up and listen for once.”

The tension rises, Steve giving her a firm, disproving look before complying. Clint looks contemplative now where he had been just as incensed as Steve. He can tell that there’s something bad coming and the apprehension is clear on his face. She wants to sneer at him, hiss and spit, she loves him more than she's ever loved anyone and she still is so incensed that she can't possibly articulate it to him. Wanda looks just as peaceful as she has since she was inducted into the group, something that always sat wrong with Natasha. The complete and honest lack of care for others or their problems. Natasha was trained the same, but there's never - ever - been a flicker of anything but contempt and fiendish glee from her. Sam looked offended on behalf of Steve and her sympathy for him decreases. 

“I have been apprised of some rather damning evidence. Evidence of not only blatant lies but also misrepresentation and what is classified as a capital crime in many places, including Wakanda.” He gives the USB to Ayo, who then moves to the TV to bring up the files on it. Steve has tensed up further, shifting in his chair like he wants to stop her. But Natasha can see that he's curious, too. “This is a collection of videos of what actually happened in Siberia and - Mr. Rogers you will sit down and remain seated. I do not want to hear word from any of you so everyone gets a chance to witness this.”

The video starts. 

Natasha is already sick, opting to sit in a chair a part from everyone else while taking deep breaths to calm the rising tide of fresh anxiety and apprehension. She may have been told about what happened but she has yet to see it. Behind her, quiet to all but her own superior hearing, she knows the doors have opened and that Barnes has been ushered in. He's being hidden behind T'Challa and his guard, given full sight of the TV without alerting anyone else to his presence. The first video is grainy, as Tony promised. It isn’t clear what is being said, nor is it easy to see in detail what the three of them are watching. They can see an exchange, Tony striking Steve first, and then Steve and James proceeding to beat the living hell out of Tony to the point of incapacitating him and leaving him for dead while Steve leads James out of the compound without sparing Tony a second glance.

Steve looks calculating, like he’s already trying to figure out a way to explain this. Like the static video of Tony striking first is just confirmation that this is really Tony’s fault. But before he can open his mouth, Natasha shoots him the dirtiest look she can muster, letting the full extent of her rage and homicidal feelings flash across her face. He looks cowed, a carefully-pulled expression that she sees for what it is: an act. His gears are turning, she can tell, and she will die before he has a chance to make himself out to be the victim. 

T’Challa is the only on who speaks, “This is simply a birds-eye view of the events from the video surveillance of the compound. What should we be expecting next, Ms. Romanoff?”

The King looks livid, not with her, no, the venom is clearly for Steve. She can see it in the way he side-eyes him and she knows then and there that T'Challa wasn't informed of Tony's state. If she's right, which she used to think she was always but now isn't as quite sure, Steve probably claimed that Tony had been fine.

“Tony’s body cam. With sound and context.” She says, nothing held back, no contempt hidden.

He nods tersely and the next video starts. It’s painful to witness, so agonizing because they all know how it ends. Even Wanda can’t help a gasp as a hand flies to her mouth, covering shock when it’s revealed that not only did James Barnes kill Tony’s parents, but Steve had known for years and used Tony’s own money and resources to find his parent’s killer. Natasha is honestly surprised at Wanda's reaction but out of all things that she could possibly feel empathy about, Natasha supposes the death of a family member could break her distaste for Tony.

Clint can’t stay silent, he’s fuming, eyes glued to the TV, “He wasn’t even attacking with everything he had, Steve! He could have turned that whole base into a smoking crater with nothing left to identify either of you." He's shaking his head, like it'll clear the images out, and runs his hands shakily through his hair, "And you beat him down to the point where he couldn’t even stand. That's ruthless! That's...that's criminal."

Natasha growls, “He can't stand for good reason. He’s not just defeated here,” She starts, gesturing to the body cam’s recording of Tony on his back, looking up at the ceiling above him, snow floating gently, quietly down. The silence sends the hair across her body on end. The sound of snowfall is heavy with implication. “This, right here, this stillness? This is the part where Tony was legally dead for three minutes.”

The room is growing thicker by the minute with tension. Natasha's hearing can pick up on the tightening grip that the Dora Milaje twist on their spears. The swish of T'Challa's Kingly dress robes when he stands even straighter. Back ramrod and hands tensed behind his back. Clint's quickening breath as the situation starts to hit home for him, as he begins to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Sam and he alike are unknowingly leaning away from Steve while Wanda is rooted to her spot. Barnes is quiet, still as death, pale and torn as he glances at Steve and Natasha wonders if he even really recalls this fight. If it all was just instinct and survival.

“How long does this video last?” Sam asks, quiet and guilty, knowing that he sent Tony there. He doubted Tony’s intentions when it was Steve that was the one to be wary of. He wonders, for more than a moment, how many times exactly Steve has lied to him. How often had Sam been complicit in something so dastardly, so completely wrong.

Natasha sighs, and puts her head in her hands and knows that there is no point in trying to pretend that she isn't affected, “Hours. FRIDAY spends the full three minutes trying to bring Tony back. With the power to the suit largely disabled, it took him hours to activate the fail-safe beacon and then a few hours more for help to arrive.”

T’Challa and his guards look furious. Practically murderous if the tight lipped scowls were anything to go by, “And his injuries, other that the obvious flat-lining?”

So Natasha explains. She tells them everything and with every passing moment, with every new injury added to the catalog of pain, the room grows more and more thick with a melting pot of emotion. Shock, disgust, empathy, betrayal, furious and righteous anger. And most of it is directed at Steve. When Natasha finishes, it is silent. T’Challa’s eyes are closed while he takes several deep breaths. Clint is staring at the TV with Scott, watching almost absently while snowflakes drift across the camera’s lens while Tony’s wet and pained breathing sets an uneven tempo. Sam feels panic, laden with fear and horror, listening to Tony gasp for breath wetly while sobs wrack his chest. Sam is having trouble breathing, his breaths only coming when Tony manages to drag a rattling one in, hitching in pain. There's a flash of concern for Sam and what is perhaps the beginning of some sort of triggered PTSD episode.

Sam speaks first, though, making deliberate and accusing eye contact with Steve, taking in a steadying breath, “What the actual fuck Steve?” 

And like Natasha read his mind before he opened his petulant mouth, Steve responds, very much like it’s obvious and forgivable, “He was going to hurt Bucky.”

She knows Barnes has flinched at that. Natasha feels that well of sympathy for him because that makes it sound like it is somehow Barnes' fault. That his being there, and Tony's sorrow, is why he was beaten within an inch of his life.

“So your solution was to literally kill him?” Clint explodes. “Let’s set aside the fact that if he wanted to you both would have died. Let’s say that your blatant lie was the truth, does that really mean that killing a man - a man that housed us, protected us and armed us, a man that went to you to help - that these things warranted his death? Are you proud of yourself?” Clint is blubbering now in rage and through new, fat tears. He's standing now, gesticulating violently and so obviously on the edge of madness. "Who are you?!" He screams.

Sam is starting to inflate with rage. His breathing coming harsh, his chest rising and falling like he's run several miles at a sprint, “He has a new arc reactor now because you crushed his chest. And his life was worth making sure Bucky fucking Barnes didn’t have to deal with the consequence of his actions?”

Another flinch from Bucky.

“It wasn’t Bucky. That’s Hydra. They forced him to do that.” 

Steve says it like this is a completely acceptable excuse. That this is logical reasoning. Natasha speaks up then, even and deadly quiet, “You knew. You’ve known for years. I always knew there was a reason why you kept things from me. I assumed it was because you felt Bucky deserved some sort of privacy. But no. You knew and didn’t tell him because you wanted to keep using Tony’s resources. You made him fund the search for his parent’s murderer.”

“You let him watch.” Wanda spoke up, quiet and with pain laced in her voice. She finally speaks but it isn't timid. It's dangerous and laced with sympathy, real tears burning her eyes as they glow red, accusing. “You stood there, indifferent, and let Stark watch his parents die. You let him witness James cave in his father’s skull and choke the life out of his mother’s neck. And you knew?” Wanda was shaking with anger, tears - empathetic and hot spilling down her face - while she shook her head from side to side, hands flying up to clutch at her head. Body shaking and pulsing red with barely contained power.

Steve didn’t even have the decency to look chagrined and he actually shrugged, “Bucky is my friend. My best friend. Tony should have known better.”

“I am not even going to try to talk to you about how wrong you are because you’re clearly delusional. You were in the army, Steve. What you did was not self-defense. It was attempted murder, no, straight-up murder and the cover-up of two others. No man left behind, Steve. What you did would be considered a war crime.” Sam was standing now, pacing, “I can’t believe that I looked up to you. I can’t believe I followed someone who could so easily kill his own teammate and show no remorse.”

Steve’s face twisted into something dark and smug, and it scares Natasha. She knew it was there but seeing it come out to play was a whole other animal. Steve shrugs, uncaring and not at all bothered, “And I’d do it again. You’re acting like Tony did nothing wrong. It wasn’t like his parents died recently. He didn’t even like his father. He made this a big deal and you all are playing into his hands. He’s probably fine.”

It’s silent, deadly so, and Ayo fingers an ear piece before whispering into T’Challa’s ear, who then nods. Bucky is shifting, face stern and set in stone. Natasha doesn't think that he'll stay quiet. She wonders when he'll say something. Ayo takes the USB and leaves silently. It’s then that Scott finally speaks up, realization dawning on him like a shot to the gut. 

“Oh god,” he whispers, “I followed a psychopath across the world.” He’s panicked now, standing to run his hands through his hair, pulling on the ends, “I was almost done with my parole! I gave up being with my daughter for you! I became a fugitive and broke my promise to her because you asked!”

Steve remains unapologetic, “Those were your choices.”

“Fuck.” Clint almost sobs, rubbing his eyes and pounding his leg with a tight fist, once, twice, three times and stops, looking straight at Natasha, “There’s more, isn’t there? It’s not just Rogers and Barnes. There’s something in that folder for all of us, isn’t there?”

Clint isn’t wrong. Natasha isn’t looking forward to this part. So she opens the envelope and decides that it is Clint she’s going to start with because the poor man deserves to know before the others. Maybe that's just because she loves him. Maybe it's because there's a little kid, his kid, that was named after her. It could even been because she knows that he doesn't need to be around for the rest of it, that he can't handle this suspense. 

“Clint,” Natasha starts, voice cracking, and everyone’s eyes jump from her to the archer. “The first is that you’re facing charges for theft of SI property, for everything Stark has made for you, as well as the hand you played in the assault of Vision.”

“Assault?” Clint whispers just as Wanda flinches. “Is he- is he ok?”

“Physically.” Is all she can muster. “But that’s not the worst.” She takes a deep breath, “Laura has filed for divorce and sole guardianship of the kids. If you don’t sign it, the court will grant in anyway in absentia.”

T'Challa pulls a sympathetic look and Clint’s face crumples. Everything he fought for. Coming to help Steve because he asked. Abandoning his family and breaking a promise to them that he was done. That he had broken their trust. He breaks down into heartbreaking sobs. Sam reaches out to grip his shoulder and Clint leans into it. He takes the stack of papers from Natasha and stares at them like he isn’t sure they’re real. He's built so much over time, since leaving his father and brother, since joining SHIELD and then the Avengers. His greatest hope in life was to have a family, children and a wife that loved him. Clint wanted to be a father, a great one, one that he hadn't had. But he'd given that all up, he'd thrown it all away. He'd broken promises to not just himself but his family as well. Abandoned them. This was his price. This was his life sentence. Jail would be kinder. 

Natasha feels like this is the time to bring out the phone. It's heavy in her hand, dead but full of potential and possible reconciliation. Something, anything, for Clint. Natasha knew Laura, this divorce and distance was final, but maybe, just maybe, she'd give him this one small thing. Maybe she'd allow him the chance to hear her voice and the voices of his children. Natasha was, however, worried about what this would do to Clint. This could be what saves him, what keeps him from the edge of insanity and pain. It could, though, be his undoing. Yet, unlike Steve, Natasha knew it wasn't her business to police this.

As soon as she does, Steve’s face falls for a moment, disappointment and confusion flashing across his smug features. He knows that's the phone he had sent Tony and the fact it was here was more of a statement to Tony washing his hands of them then anything else thus far. Steve has miscalculated, he got too caught up in his own glory and self-righteousness and assumed that whatever the letter he sent, whatever it said, would make Tony see sense again. Like it would be this magical band aid to sooth their 'disagreement'. 

“I sent that phone to Tony. How do you have it?”

“He gave it to me.” Natasha snaps. There is nothing left in her but contempt for Steve. “And destroyed that joke of a letter you sent. You couldn’t even pretend to legitimately apologize.” She takes a breath and addresses the rest of them. “Tony has a few numbers listed in this phone. Clint, Laura’s is in here. She’s agreed to talk to you, but I’ll warn you that if she decides to end contact, she will tell Tony and he’s promised to make it that you won’t be able to contact them again.” Clint races across the room and snatches the phone, cradling it like something precious, and leaves to charge it. Waiting on the edge of his bed for it to charge just enough to turn back on. Natasha watches him disappear into his room, not caring to turn on a light and not saying another word. She sighs, forlorn, and looks to Sam and Scott, "Sam, your mother's number is in there as well. Scott, your ex-wife and girlfriend's as well. But I hope you could give Clint time. Just a little while."

They both nod, sympathetic and neither looking like they're interested in using it right away regardless. 

“What about me?” Wanda asks when the silence settles again. Natasha's hackles rise at her small, plaintive voice. Like she deserves anything but derision and pain. “I was the one who - I used my magic to…”

Natasha finishes for her, fishing out her paperwork, without an ounce of sympathy or care for her feelings, “For forcing Vision through twelve levels of sub terrainian basements. You have assault charges as well. Unfortunately, because your visa for your living situation in the US was nullified, your only option is to stay here as an indefinite solution, provided T’Challa lets you. Otherwise, no matter what country you manage to make your way into will extradite you to Sokovia where you will be charged with war crimes." 

“And do I get to talk to Vision? Do I get to apologize?” Natasha wants to laugh at how small her voice sounds. Like she's made a minor mistake instead of violently attacking a team mate and friend.

Natasha shakes her head, “It’s been made clear that anyone who so much as attempts to reach out to Tony, Vision, Pepper, or Rhodey will be ruthlessly attacked.”

At the mention of Rhodey’s name, Sam flinches. Wanda takes her paperwork and, with magic crackling along her hair and dancing across her white-knuckled grip, leaves silently to her room. There is a small flash of something in Natasha for her but she shoves it aside, knowing full and well that there is more to deal with than one woman's trouble. Everything that is coming for Wanda is of her own design, much like Steve.

“How is Rhodey?” Sam asks, quiet.

Natasha shoots him a sad smile, “Paralyzed from the waist down. Tony’s been working on prosthetic legs.”

Sam nods, forlorn, and asks in a small voice, “That’s not all, is it?”

“No.” Natasha wants to make this clear, hoping that it really sinks in to both Sam’s and Steve’s minds. “Sam, Steve,” she starts, taking a deep, fortifying breath and deliberately speaks to Sam more than Steve. This is a moment she felt strongly responsible for and it was only fair to him for her to maintain eye contact and be clear, “You have both been dishonorably discharged from the army and stripped of all of your titles.”

And this, this, is the hill Steve decides to fight on, “Tony can’t do that! He can’t take my rank!”

Natasha snaps, livid, because Sam is distraught but there is a part of her that can tell he saw this coming. But here is Steve, ignoring the pain and agony of all of his other team members because he can't tout himself as Captain anymore. “No, he can’t. That’s why I said the military did it. You’re not a Captain. You’re not anything. You’re lucky you aren’t being court marshaled.”

Steve stands, aggressive and face twisted into cold fury, “No. This is Tony’s doing. This is all about me keeping his parents death from him. And this is the perfect example why. Look at this,” Steve gestures to the room and waves dismissively at T’Challa and the Dora Milaje, “I was fighting for what’s right and this is what it gets me?”

T'Challa speaks up now, furious and drawing himself to his full height, “I suggest you curb your tongue, Mr. Rogers. This is my home, my palace, where I am King. These are my people, of which I have placed in danger by housing you. Careful of the cliff’s edge you are so carelessly toeing.”

Steve scoffs, “You have me here because you gave your word. Are you really saying that the word of a King,” Steve spits, “such as yourself is really so feeble to be challenged just because one man can’t handle being knocked down.”

Suddenly, there’s a spear leveled at Steve’s throat and Ayo is poised, coiled tension and radiating pure venom, “I would take care for your next words, filth, for if they disparage my King again I will free your tongue from your throat and watch as I force you to eat it.”

“Steve,” Sam interjects, fear thick in his voice while he circles from the couch to stand with Natasha and T’Challa, he's spotted Barnes and he's obviously taking a side, a new one, “we are guests here. You don’t have power to do whatever you please. And you are speaking to the King of this country. His generosity is the reason you aren’t in prison. Why we all aren’t in prison.”

Steve levels Sam with a sneer, “You would side with him.”

“What that fuck is that supposed to mean?” Sam demands, all anger now, any awe he had left for Steve firmly ripped from the root. Sam isn't unfamiliar with Steve's tone. He understands how 'him' sounds just like 'them'. How he remembers men calling his own father 'boy'. How he was classified as 'other' even in the twenty-first century by Air Force men and women that still held tight to their racist ideologies.

“You know. You spades are all the same." And there it is again. 'Spade'. Steve knows what he's saying and he doesn't seem to care. So he continues, shameless, "Claiming titles and property and acting like you have any real ownership over anything you see.”

Natasha’s hackles rise and she steps up to stand by Ayo, who is frozen in frigid rage. Natasha fingers her widow’s bites and sets the charges to the highest setting possible. Natasha has heard enough. She may be white, she may have more privilege than most, but she's been called many things, too. Cabbage-eater, Russki, bitch, whore, a life support system for a cunt. Steve is overstepping by miles and she is just as shocked as she is livid to find that he's so thoroughly racist.

“Rogers.” Natasha growls, "Say one more thing. Let even a euphemism slip and I will put you down myself."

T’Challa cuts in, incensed and eyes blazing, “You will calm yourself and be prepared to be moved to a cell. You are officially being confined so that the proper arrangements can be made for your extradition.”

“You think you can take me? I’m Captain America. I’ve saved the world multiple times. No court in the United States with convict me.” Steve laughs, “And to believe that the US is interested in this back-water country. Your fancy gadgets are just that: gilded and shiny. That's all your jobs have ever been, Shiners.”

Barnes finally speaks, coming forward, respectful of the King and his guard. His voice is hard and unyielding, demanding, “Steve, that’s enough.” 

Steve stills at the sound of James Barnes’ voice. He turns slowly to take in the look of his best friend, disbelieving and confused before suspicion creeps across his face. James knows what's coming and he moves again to stand next to the King as a show of support, staring Steve down with cold fury. 

“You said that you’d keep him until you could remove the triggers from his head. Or are you going to go back on your word for that, too?” Steve sneers.

T’Challa regards him coolly, “The only promise made was to take care of Mr. Barnes. You assumed that extended to you because you treat him as your property. Like any other colonizer, you assumed that your presence was a given, and I allowed this because it was safer for all parties. Make no mistake, I am unafraid of both you and your threats.” He nods to Barnes and receives a nod in response. “I awoke Mr. Barnes because, while he did not kill my father, he did kill Mr. Stark’s.”

Steve rolls his eyes and huffs, “He was under control for that he can hardly be held responsible.”

“Fuck you, Steve. You racist piece of shit.” Barnes bites out. “You don’t get to decide what I’m responsible for and what I’m not. You’ve done enough in my name to make me sick. You technically killed a man that housed you, fed you, armed you, and took care of everything you needed. And your reaction to this was to lie and use his own resources to find the person that murdered his parents? You don’t feel the slightest bit guilty for that?”

Natasha interjects, "You know, James, Steve's lied to you, too."

Bucky looks at her, confused and his eyes flash to Steve. Rogers is murderous, his eyes burning like coals while he tries to intimidate her.

"What do you mean?" Bucky asks.

Steve takes a threatening step forward and the guard surrounds him, spears unyielding, "Natasha." It's said like a warning.

She just dismisses him with a single look and turns to James, "Wanda Maximoff, the woman you helped escape, was a completely willing Hydra operative," she pauses to look at Steve with disdain, "and Steve knew. Kept it from you. And the worst of it?" Natasha is gearing up, blood rushing through her veins with adrenaline for a fight she knows is about to break out. "She can control minds. She did it to all of us, the worst of which was to Tony and Bruce Banner."

"You bitch!" Steve yells, veins standing out against his neck and forehead. He breathes deep in through his nose, careful of the spears leveled at his throat and looks to Bucky. "You were in Hydra, too, Bucky. She's making it sound like Wanda's a monster."

"Because she is!" James roars. "She was a willing applicant?! You knew and it didn't matter? You pretend to want to save me and you side yourself with someone who joined a terrorist organization on her own volition?" 

“You would have done the same. If it was switched you would have. That’s what Until the End of the Line means. Doing whatever it takes.”

Bucky laughs, bellyaching and gasping for breath, “No it fucking doesn’t. That means support, emotional and spiritual. That means looking out for each other and being a shoulder to lean on. Someone you can cry in front of and not worry about judgement.” Bucky’s smile fades and is replaced by a look of disgust, “What you did, what you’ve done, wasn’t for me. It was all for you." James pulls himself up to his full height, all meekness has left and the line of his shoulders isn't bowed anymore. He's full of righteous anger and fury. Everyone in the room is. He continues, "Now, you’re going to allow yourself to be escorted to a containment cell where you will wait for King T’Challa to organize your movement to the Hague to be charged and sentenced. No, keep your mouth shut. And I am going to be going with you to be tried for crimes against humanity and the murder of Tony Stark’s parents as well as the attempted murder of Tony himself. And I swear to God, Steve, if you fight any of this I will plead guilty without trial just so I can beg to be sentenced to a prison as far away from you as I can possibly get.”

Steve laughs, unburdened and rich with humor, "The world is filled with people that think like me, Bucky. You were always soft. Didn’t want to join the army. Got drafted. You would have let the Nazi's take over if it meant you stayed on the home front.” 

James just shakes his head and sighs, “The US didn’t give a shit about the Nazi’s when it all started. Hydra went unchecked for a years before the war even began and even then the US waited to step in. The war effort wasn’t glamorous, Steve. Good people died. Non-Americans suffered. Your mother’s people were put into camps and killed like vermin. Your whole argument reduced the terror of the war down to them being bullies. You weren’t interested in saving people. You only wanted people to see you as a hero.” 

“Erksine didn’t make a mistake." Steve insists. "He said that the serum made bad people worse and good people better.” Steve argues, like this means all he's done is excusable and the fault isn't his. Natasha snorts. 

Barnes actually laughs and the sound rattles Steve, Natasha can see it, like Steve is the butt of some joke, "Yeah, and you think that Red Skull was your opposite? No. He was just easy to spot, a target that made his evil known. You’re darker than that. You don’t have an allegiance to anything but yourself and what you want. There's no rhetoric you follow. You don’t hold yourself to the same standard as everyone else. You’re worse than he was because you managed to trick me and every other person that Captain America stood for freedom when all you’ve ever stood for is yourself.” He looks at T'Challa and ignores Steve's huffing, "I'm ready to go to a cell. You can handcuff me if you want, but please, if I may ask and if it isn't trouble, keep me as far away from him as you can."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry. We will get to Tony, Pepper, Morgan (bc fuck the timeline), Rhodey, Eddie Brock, Venom, and Laura soon. This is a long fic so do not expect things to move along quickly.


	3. Clint's Call: Laura's Ultimatum

“Clint,” Laura starts and it sounds so defeated. There’s a certain amount of longing there, forlorn and filled with regret. However, there’s no hope in the sound. He can tell, there’s no light at the end of this tunnel. There’s this appropriate feeling of sinking. Since he’s started it hasn’t been a tunnel, it’s been a well; endless and deep, cool and detached, the sun’s light getting more and more distant before all he can experience is darkness, and it terrifies him. It’s cold and gripping like a vice around his chest while the free-fall takes his breath away. Laura tries again, “I...the kids are just...I don’t think…”

She can’t even finish a sentence. Clint finally puts himself into her shoes to understand - to feel for what she cannot articulate. It’s hard, he’s always been a hero - or he’s always wanted to be one - and this was like a crowning jewel. This achievement, this alliance, fighting along-side Steve Rogers - Captain America - was something Clint had spent his entire life trying to paramount to, short of being his own Icon, his own hero - revered and loved. He needed to be relevant. He needed to be loved by the people and called on to help. He thought those were things that would make his life complete.

Along the way, he’d picked up a girlfriend, who became his wife - the love of his life and the mother of his children, his beautiful, beautiful children where he’d always imagined himself a better father than his had ever been. Strong, present, morally-upright and focused on justice and peace. Is that where he was now? After seeing that video with Tony, after realizing what the Steve Roger’s troupe had wrought across the world. Fear. Derision. Panic and suffering. Were those heroes? Were they heroes? How much destruction was necessary and how much was gratuitous? 

What did this look like to the family back home? A present father, finally retired, ready to help his wife with farm duties, fixing things, changing diapers, giving her a nap she fully and well deserved. That was his promise. After SHIELD, after the world fought back the aliens and after he’d worked to right some of his own wrongs - attontment - he’d sworn to step back. He’d thought that a simple life with those pleasures: family, love, peace, mowing the lawn and helping with the crop yield. He’d promised pillow forts and backyard barbeques. He’d promised parent-teacher night and being present for birthdays. He’d promised emotional support to not just his kids, but his wife, and missed early-morning coffees, backrubs, time with the kids so she could have just one fucking afternoon to herself to binge read Koontz. 

And then Steve Rogers had called and implored, begged, pleaded, talking about how Wanda was a prisoner of Tony’s design and that everything up to this point had been a miscommunication. Captain America painted had been painted the villain, someone to be feared and unconcerned with the public and their plight. He’d felt it then, righteous anger and boiling rage. An injustice had been brought against The Captain America, the paragon of truth and justice - veritable treason - and he was the tipping point in leading the fight against the Accords and the chains they wrought. 

But that wasn’t it, was it? He hadn’t read them, he’d been retired, essentially a civilian with training. There was no reason for assessment. None for careful vetting or a second opinion. He’d forgotten that Tony was the genius, that other countries had laws and their own people that held different moral quandaries and civil laws, that there were people who saw the Avengers as vigilanties at best and bankrolled loose-cannons at worst. He didn’t hear his wife’s criticisms of the Revenger’s movement. He hadn’t accepted her dismissal and rather spot-on evaluations of his real intentions because, in the end, what did she know? 

She hadn’t ever been an agent. There hadn’t been that sort of hardship for her. A poor family? He’d had that. Abusive father and an absent mother? Check. What had she’d had that was any worse than he’d ever experienced? Had he’d ever cared to listen and remember? He loved her but is that because of what she represented or who she actually was? He wasn’t always home. He didn’t always call - couldn’t always, anyway. But had she been holding out for his retirement like it was the saving grace, like she would finally have him, in his entirety, for herself. 

Was that the tipping point? Maybe he wasn’t ready to be the patriarch. Maybe belonging to one person and their brood was something he was never going to be able to actually handle. He’d spent so much time working for a handler but largely policing his own actions, his own assignments, that having a family meant working on the time-table of someone else and their own needs - that scared him. Was it the getting up early to work on farm equipment and plowing fields that felt beneath him? That even though he’d been in some of the filthiest of environments throughout his life still held more importance because that was a job; something that was assigned, something to be completed. Something that had an end.

But fatherhood was never complete. Being a husband didn’t have an end-date. These things were infinite, unavoidable the moment they were created - a life made the moment that he’d accepted that station in life without understanding the implications, without understanding the depth of conviction and loyalty that it came with. His work, these missions, these were the real obstacles. Family life and sharing an emotional connection were streamers - icing on the cake, confetti, an elaborate coffee that you’d normally avoid simply because of the time it took to make it. Something to covet as a prize to be won but not maintained. Like a family could survive, and thrive, in a vacuum. That there wouldn’t be resentment because work came first, duty was paramount to any other vocation, any other title, because he thought for the longest time that he was what he did, not what he made. 

But he’d made a marriage, hadn’t he? He’d made children and made promises. He had taken on the mantle of: husband, father, caregiver, partner, confidant - he’d agreed to her terms and accepted them, because hey, if he could be a spy he could be a family man. In his mind, even as a child, he’d always seen being a good father as easy. No one else could possibly be worse than his old man. The bar was low, any effort at all was a win. That is not the truth of it, though. You can be just as bad as a father, as a parent. You can be your father but in a different way. There was no abuse - emotional or otherwise - but abandonment was a form of poor fatherhood. Missing milestones: birthdays, missing teeth, tea parties, taekwondo tournaments, barbeques, school plays, and so on. 

Those were Moments. Those were I’ll-Remeber-Ths-When-I’m-Thirty-And-Drunk-At-Chrismas Moments. The ‘Dad said he’d come but we don’t bother setting out a plate for him’ times. He’d corrupted his image, tricked his wife, and flat-out lied to his children. Promising gifts of time and half-hearted, unfinished projects. Sad beginnings of a tree-house. The tractor that he’d never got around to fixing. The half-painted white picket fence and the shutters that he’d started but hadn’t bolted down. 

He imagined being his wife. Bustling around, changing diapers and doing laundry. He tried imagining what it was like to get them all ready for school: waking them, dressing them, feeding them, seeing them off and then cleaning the chaos. He imagined being the only parent to hear about their child’s well-being; what it was to be the custodial parent. And it was exhausting. It was a weight - something he hadn’t ever really experienced - having to care for and be responsible for the well-being of someone other than himself. 

Sure, he’d had partners on missions but it wasn’t his purview to help them through emotional turmoil. It hadn’t been his job to console them or care after them past mandated, field-medic behavior. He’d pulled agents out of fires and saved them from wayward shots but he had never been responsible for the after - never for anything that the mission didn’t ask for. What did he know about raising children? On his off-time, for moments where he could have gone home, it was more likely for him to stay with SHIELD or with the Avengers later. 

Being a family man was something he’d always wanted but turned out to not even be good at; not even passable. 

“Laura, I’m sorry.” He tries to placate and he knew when it left his mouth that it probably was not the right thing to say. 

Her silence turns icy and he can imagine her straightening to her full height. Their youngest babbles somewhere close in the background and he’s sure he’s on her hip. There’s a muffled voice talking back to him but he can’t hear who it is over Laura’s snap, “You’re ‘sorry’?” She laughs and it is slightly manic, “Sorry is what I make the kids say to each other when they say something mean or throw toys at one-another. Sorry is for small mistakes; it’s for accidents. Has our entire marriage been an accident?”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” Clint barks and it is like he can’t stop himself. All the bile and venom that he’s been practically fueling himself with over the last couple months is a fount he cannot control anymore. “I’m sorry for leaving again but you’re upset that I’m doing my job?”

Laura scoffs, “You were retired, first of all, Clinton. You promised our children, you promised me, and you left us because of a single phone call. No! Don’t say anything. Listen for fucking once.” She spits out the curse word like its just the beginning of her vehmenance, “You’ve been doing this to us since we got married, since we had our first. You swore to me at the altar that we would be your priority, that love was more important to you; that fatherhood was more important to you than your job. We had money, we had an easy, comfortable life and it wasn’t enough for you.”

“Captain America needed my help and I was supposed to say no?” It’s a straw man argument, he knows this. She’s talking about more than his current predicament, though it was a tipping point. He’s avoiding her points because he knows that she’s right and that she is entitled to her fury. 

“Let’s forget the fact that you followed Steve Rogers at a whim with little-to-no information. Let us move past that because you know that this is bigger than the fact that my soon-to-be ex-husband is an internationally-wanted fugitive.” She sighs and talks to someone else in the room, the phone pressed to her chest. He can make out a faint question, “Can you get the kids’ things together? Lila still needs her coat and Cooper has a habit of taking his shoes off and losing them all over again.”

“Sure thing, Laura.” Is the response, then, quieter, “Are you ok? Do you want me to take Nathaniel?”

Laura sighs and moves the phone back up to her ear, “Yes, please. Thank you, Pep. This won’t be long. Give me ten, fifteen minutes.”

“Are you talking to Pepper Potts?” Clint asks, incredulous, “You’re letting her around our children?”

“My children.” She barks. “That’s what the paperwork I know Natasha has says. I’m divorcing you, Clint, and I will gain full and sole custody of my kids. It is not any of your business whom I decide to have around my own children. But I feel like you should know: it is because of Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, and Col. Rhodes that you still have a living, breathing family.”

Clint’s brain short-circuits and he blinks, “What do you mean?”

“Natasha and Rogers dumped all of SHIELD’s data.”

“They had to,” Clint scoffs, “SHIELD was infiltrated by HYDRA. You know that.”

Laura sighs again and it’s a tired and frustrated sound, “No. They should have involved Tony. He had the resources and genius to release information and expose hydra without compromising the lives of every single SHIELD agent and their families.” At that, understanding dawns on Clint and he pales. She carries on, “That’s a little strange, isn’t it? Why did Rogers leave Tony out of the whole thing? It’s almost like Barnes was the only thing he was interested in. Think about it: if he’d employed Tony, he would have eventually come across Winter Soldier files. He would have seen that video. Steve probably thought he’d lose the chance to use Tony’s resources to scour the globe for his Murder Popscicle.”

That last phrase is definitely something she had picked up from Tony, he can tell, but that isn’t what rankles him. There’s this great, fiery pit of anger bubbling up within him and he realizes. He understands. This has been about Steve since the beginning. This has been about Barnes and what Steve wanted. There had been no consideration for what their actions would bring. Even Natasha didn’t seem to care - or maybe she hadn’t put it together - that their work, what they did when they released all that information condemned every single agent from janitorial to undercover. 

“You know what Tony did do though?” Laura asks, voice firm and almost adoring, “It was too late for him to pull things offline. Once it’s on the internet it never really leaves. So he spent weeks, days at a time, not sleeping or doing anything else except combing through files and decrypting them to find every agent and their families and move them. Even then, he only managed to save a little over half.”

Clint’s throat is tight, “And are you...did any of the kids...are you all ok? Were any of you hurt?”

“And now he asks the right fucking question.” Laura laughs but it’s hollow. “How many times have you really ever spared to think of us and if we were ok? You didn’t check in after the data dump. When you got to your hideout I got one, ONE, inquiry. You didn’t call, you didn’t ask after your own children, you didn’t do anything. But we aren’t heroes, we’re just your family, loving us is secondary to being loved. It’s always been like that, though. I don’t know why I ever expected differently.”

“That isn’t fair,” Clint tries to argue but it sounds more like pleading, “you don’t know what I feel.”

Laura is silent for a moment and Clint is clutching the phone so hard in his hand that he can hear the plastic creak. She finally speaks, low and sad, “I do know. Your actions tell me these things. You’ve made your priorities clear with your choices, Clint.” She sounds almost sad for him here, like she wishes things were different. “But you know,” she continues, and the moment has passed, she’s hard again and unmoved, “If anything, I’m doing you a favor. Now you can follow Steve Rogers across the world without having to spare a second thought to pretend like we mean anything to you. Which shouldn’t deviate too much from the current status quo. Congratulations, Clinton. You may not have been an alcoholic like your father, but you’re still just like him. Your kids came dead last.”

“Laura, please, I’ll sign the papers but let me have this, please, let me call. Let me talk to the kids.”

Laura sniffs and he can imagine her, worrying at her lip with her teeth, brows furrowed, “You will not be talking to my children until you’ve turned yourself in and accepted your sentence with a plead of ‘Guilty’. If you ever want to even hear from us again, let alone be able to see my children, you will do it after you’ve gone through the proper judicial processes. I will not let you be a bad example to my kids. They need to know that doing the wrong thing has consequences. That is the only thing I’m willing to do.”

“But, Laura, what if-” Clint tries, panicked. Turning himself over would mean jail, there was no way around it, he never thought that this - everything that has happened - could possibly end behind bars. The mantle of Superhero or even just as an agent for SHIELD meant that his work was good, and that he was good. He realizes that he’d assumed that true punishment - jail time - wasn’t something he was susceptible to.

“That’s all I’m willing to do. It’s this or nothing. And I will be vicious, Clinton.”

“Ok, Laura. Ok.”

She hangs up the phone without anything else. He misses the little ‘Love you!’ he was so used to hearing from her. He stared down at the dark phone in his hand, in his spacious and lavish room, and mourned. He’d been so angry, so livid, several steps past rage for so long. Looking back, he realizes that he’d been like that because he couldn’t let anything else in. Namely: doubt.

He should have been far more concerned when his initial reach-out to Laura almost - god, was it really a year ago? - had been nothing more than their base code-phrase that they were ok. It was short and sweet and had not been anything more than an assurance. He hadn’t even cared to look into it, and had he even tried reaching out again after that? No. He was in this constant swirl of emotion, hatred for Tony and sympathy. Not for Stark, but for Wanda. His focus since ‘saving’ her from her internment swallowed most of his thoughts. Venom and a weird, fathery affect. 

That really got his gears turning. He’d clearly not been the father of the year with his own children but he did love them. So why had he spent so much time fawning over Wanda? Now that he was alone, now that events had been brought to light, now that the anger seemed to have left him, however temporary, he felt like something was becoming more clear. He’d left his family originally because Captain America had asked, had pleaded his case and painted Tony as a villain. Steve had played to Clint’s own guilt over Pietro’s death to pull Wanda out.

But after that, it wasn’t a patriotic duty. It hadn’t felt like a disagreement. He felt that rage consume him the moment he stepped in to get Wanda. Like a saturation. It consumed him. He cast no last look to Vision when he was put down. All he’d felt was anger and smug satisfaction on their way to see Steve. It all built up from that point.

Sure, he’d never fully liked Tony, but not because of who he was as a person - no - it was because of the things he had. His money, his genius, his charm and passion. Clint had felt like he’d lost passion well before he’d escaped the clenched, meaty hands of his own father. Survival and passion were not the same and he had resented Tony for that. Choosing to forget what Tony had been through, refusing to see the signs of an abused child reflected in a person as an adult. Because Hawkeye wasn’t Iron Man. Clint was tactical when needed and an excellent shot but those aren’t Superhero traits. The best he was, the best he had been, was a Spy. 

Seeing the Starks die at the hands of the Winter Soldier had been horrifying but the empathy he felt wasn’t his. There’s this creeping, slimy feeling taking up residence in his head. Sympathy, sure, but empathy? How much of his emotions had been influenced by Wanda?

Sitting in the dark, the glow of the moon playing through his window - the only source of his light - he forced himself to remember the feeling of Loki having that control. The way his own brain had told him that Loki’s plight was right and fair. This undeniable urge to do what he was told. And while he hadn’t felt the same with Wanda exactly, he was starting to feel where his own petulant feelings ended and her venom began. 

He was sick.

The knee-jerk reaction to blame others reared up like a tide. Natasha should have seen this, she was supposed to be the one he could trust in the field. Steve was a self-appointed paragon of truth and righteousness and he’d just accepted Wanda onto the team, regardless of the fact that she was not only a willing participant in a terrorist organization, but could also influence minds? 

Things have a catalyst, though. Something has to disrupt the first domino to send the rest cascading down. And he found himself responsible. He’d taken the call, he hadn’t asked questions, and he’d broken his promise to his family. One that he’d even promised himself when he was just a young agent trying to doing right when everything up to that point had been survival and self-interest. He’d dreamed of being a hero, but not one for the world, one for himself and a family. He had wanted something special.

But he was here.

He was in a dark room, on a lovely bed in a gilded cage, hunted internationally and sure to lose that sponsorship after everything had come to light. 

His tablet, the one he’d been given by King T’Challa, to keep him up-to-date on the world news with the Accords downloaded onto it for reading lit up on his desk. He stared at the bright, blue-white light until it darkened again. It couldn’t post anything, couldn’t send anything, it was a tool to keep them educated and they'd never used it more than to see what new bullshit Tony was up to. 

He walked to it numbly, hands shaking, the phone placed carefully onto the tabletop, and picked up the tablet. It appeared as if they’d been given access again. The alerts were focused though, and the pad was dinging over and over, news articles from across the globe filtering through his screen. Clint looked over them with increasing horror. Stories of the dead and the injured. Videos of Steve’s destruction across the world while looking for Bucky. Then, smaller-time newspaper articles with the names of agents he knew and the slaughter of them and their families.

It dawned on him that this wasn’t recent. Someone was feeding him all this information. Videos of children being saved from burning houses, scarred and screaming. News reports of coups in other countries succeeding, unnamed agents being publicly executed by guerilla groups while their families watched. The outrage from the Russian government against not SHIELD, but the United States for collecting intelligence on them and releasing their data on the internet. He knew they were after Natasha’s head. The Widow program was laid out bare and the depths of HYDRA’s claws in their government was open for the world to see. 

People were calling for their capture. For justice. There were plenty of places that didn’t care if that meant alive for court proceedings or dead and left for nature’s scavengers to tear them to pieces and have them strewn across the earth. People wanted blood and he couldn’t blame them.

The last of the images to cross his vision before he could make his hand move to shakily lock the screen was that of his own home. What was left of it. A smoking heap of burning embers and blackened beams. The kid’s unfinshed treehouse up in flames, tire swing bellow burning blue. It looked like a missile had hit the barn, reducing it to a crater. The fields were razed and burned to black. He knew they were safe but the sight alone made him start to gag.

The tablet was tossed onto the desk while he grappled around his room for his small trash bin, hand clamped over his mouth and bile hot in the back of his throat. Finally, as soon as he found it he let everything come up. There wasn’t any sound really, other than what vomit sounds like when it hits something empty and hollow. His stomach purged it all. Everything he’d eaten and then stomach acid for flair. 

There was a soft knock at his door and he didn’t dignify it with a response. He was breathing heavily, almost heaving, as he hung his head over that bin, and closed his eyes to focus on willing the rolling of his stomach down. The knock came again, a little light tap, once and then twice together before Natasha was opening his door. He didn’t have to open his eyes to know it was Natasha. That was their knock, their sign to one-another.

“I’m not in the mood, Natasha.” Clint said, voice sounding weird reverberating through the trash can and his sick.

It is silent for more than a moment. He knows she’s there, he can hear her breath and her shifting feet. He can tell that she’s anxious and fighting back what he imagines is a whole dam’s worth of questions about Laura and the kids. He feels petty for a second, where he sneers into the trash can, because who is she to care? Where was she when this all happened? Hadn’t she smugly told that panel of judges that they wouldn’t convict her for treason because they needed the Avengers - needed her? She was just as culpable for the almost-death of his family as Steve was. 

He can’t help the chuckle that leaves his mouth as he sets the bin down and wipes the back of his hand across his acrid mouth, “They almost died. Because of you.”

She doesn’t answer that but he does look up at her face to revel in the look of distraught guilt.

“I didn’t know-” She finally tries but Clint isn’t having any of that.

“You didn’t know that showing the whole world everything about SHIELD and HYDRA’s infiltration would mean the death of agents - people we worked alongside, some that had even saved our lives - and the massacre of their families?” He laughs, a little crazed, “You, The Spy, the one that is supposed to live and breathe intelligence gathering and hoard secrets, did not know? They never crossed your mind?”

She snaps, “They didn’t cross yours either. You knew what happened. Where were you? Who was there when they came after Laura?”

“Fuck you.” He tries to bite out but it has no heat. He’s misplacing blame, maybe there are parts that he was not directly responsible for but he does have a lot of responsibility. “I’m sorry.”

She shakes her head, hair swinging with the violent action, “Don’t. I don’t deserve to hear that from you. I should be the one apologizing. I’ve really fucked up. I fucked up so bad, Clint. And I don’t know what to do.”

The fear in her voice is real and it shakes Clint. Natasha does her best to hide most things from the world, and even him, but she seems well and truly lost. Clint feels that, too, for her and for himself. Does he live like a coward? Lying and cheating his way across the world to live in some filthy studio apartment where people don’t have internet or the ability to watch the news? Or does he accept the likelihood of a lengthy jail sentence in hopes of seeing his kids at all?

“I don’t know what to do either.” Clint admits, patting the bed next to him in invitation for her to sit. She does, walking stilted and stiff, and sits with her back straight. Clint sighs and leans against her, “We can’t stay here can we?”

“No.”

“What should we do?”

She sighs and leans back against him, sagging like she’s heavier than she is, “Bucky is asking to be handed over to the UN in the Hague. I don’t know about Sam and Scott, but there’s not much of a choice for any of us, is there?”

All Clint can say is, “There was.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry! I don't have any real sympathy here. But they are people so I feel like it does the story justice to follow the downfall closely. Stay tuned.


	4. Conversations to Be Had

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't have a beta and it's almost 4 am so sorryyyyy for any mistakes.

Wanda is in her room. She’s tired both bodily and in mind like she’s spent days using her power to keep herself going. Belatedly, she wonders if that’s what she’s been doing this whole time. She drew her power back into herself, no traces left to dance across her knuckles or left to static her hair. It feels like this heavy, electrified and angry thing; red where it lashes out but dark, almost black like a pool of blood and hate. She can feel it in her head, raging and nasty. 

She had hated Stark for so long for something she knew, deep down - at least now - that had never been by his design. But she had so much hate in her, so much blazing and bright drive for revenge, that she’d let him be her focus. She’d joined a terrorist organization, let them experiment on her, on Pietro, and she drove him to it. Played him like a fiddle. He’d been soft, wanted peace and to rebuild. He’d wanted to help their country through their civil war and move on.  Looking back, she’d influenced him, even before she had her powers, she’d manipulated him into following her. Denied him his dream, corrupted him into thinking that for there to be peace, true peace, there must first be vengeance. What was peace without punishment, without justice?

And then she’d got what she had wanted. Power. Immeasurable and dangerous. She used it readily, freely, happily, destroying the minds of both criminals and innocents and she did it with a smile. That power had felt like freedom and righteousness. It had felt like justice. She tore apart minds gleefully like they were nothing. Her specialty had been nightmares and horrors. She had delighted in turning people loose in their own minds, locked inside terrors of her own making and was happy to watch them become babbling husks of themselves.

Ultron was something she’d thought she could control, that she had calculated for, and when he revealed his intent to destroy the whole world and every sorry person on it she knew then that she’d gone too far. She couldn’t get retribution if Tony Stark died before she could ever inflict on him the same heartbreak and sorrow she had thought he’d wrought upon her. And then, like a miracle, like a blessing or some sort of tip of the scales in exchange for the death of her brother, she was made an Avenger. No disciplinary action. Not even a slap on the wrist. 

Still, she held onto her hate, let it consume her and roll off of her in waves, because there was a small and secret part of her that knew if she admitted that Stark held no fault that meant that Pietro’s death could have been avoidable. That it was really a product of her own misguided and boiling rage. That it was her machinations that culminated to the death of the only person she had loved that had been left. 

Wanda could hear the commotion in the living area. She could feel Steve’s vitriol crash into her like waves battering a cliff. He had hidden it so well. It scared her because she was always so open with her hate and anger. Steve had been so gentle, so nice, so understanding and constantly there for her with advice that she’d felt was to reassure her, to make her feel like she wasn’t as evil as she felt. That the scales were tipping back. Sure people had died as a direct result of her own lack of control but these things are unavoidable. That’s what he told her whenever he could. Like he wasn’t just telling her, but himself. And she had believed him. She’d allowed herself to be told that sometimes doing the right thing meant death of innocent people. 

Children. Parents. Families.

And wasn’t that what she had been? Hadn’t her family, every last one now, died in the name of one thing or another. A fake bomb in a Civil War. Shot to death to save people she’d endangered. Steve said those lives taken, while sad, were unavoidable and not something to dwell on. That you can’t save everyone. He wouldn’t have cared about her parents. He hadn’t said anything about Pietro. Steve hadn’t spared a thought to the people that died in Lagos.  She could feel his true self now, now that she’d pulled her own emotions in tight, and it made her sick. Wanda could here the names he was calling the King and his people. She may not know the meaning but she knew the context. She’d been called Gypsy. She’d been considered a second-class citizen - and that was given like it was well above what she was worth, 

On a whim, with hope in her heart, she reached out with her power. She was connected to the mind stone. If she couldn’t see Vision, maybe she could at least tell him how sorry she was and maybe doing it this way he could see her conviction. It wasn’t hard. Vision was always a bright part in her mind. Like light, golden and warm, staving off the worst of the onslaught her own power brought her. The connection was open and it prompted a sigh of relief. 

But that light then turned cold. 

They didn’t exchange words and she didn’t know if that was because it was thought-based or because he didn’t want to give her that last bit of comfort of spoken word. What she got was knowledge. Information. Understanding. Not for her but for others. She was suddenly aware that his influence was coiled around her magic and she was frozen, feeling it wrap around that dark ball over and over until it crackled only faintly and now it was apparent: this was a punishment. She knew she could still use her power to protect herself and to protect others but never again to hurt just to hurt. And if she tried, it would come back onto her tenfold. 

She felt an alarming amount of empathy overwhelm her. This was the second punishment. She could no longer influence the emotions of others but she could feel their pain, feel their terror, feel their sadness. The first of which was the strong, bitter taste of betrayal and hurt from Vision himself. She’d attacked him, unprovoked and without cause, and had severed whatever it was that had been between them. Tears spilled down her face and her chest heaved with wracking sobs. 

And just like that, his presence left her and her body was hers again. 

Wanda knew that she needed to turn herself in. This was the only way she could even remotely right the many wrongs she’d brought to people. But first, she had to take care of Steve. So she rose, letting her tears fall unbidden and free, and walked out of her room up stand just behind Steve. She wasn’t going to hurt him, she couldn’t if she wanted to, but she could make him sleep and neutralize the threat. 

So she touched his head with one slim, shaking finger, and watched him drop. 

Barnes, Natasha, T’Challa, Sam, and the rest of the troupe looked at her, a mixture of relief and fear rolling off them all. She simply put her hands up behind her head and knelt on the floor.

“I’d like to turn myself in.”

-

Rhodey is sweating like he’s at a family reunion running the barbeque in 95 degree weather at four o’clock in the afternoon. Physical therapy isn’t getting easier. He knows it will, eventually, but that moment feels so far away right now. He’s had to go through it before, but just for a blown knee, nothing as severe as this. The simplest of movements are hard. There’s pain, not in his back, not at the break, but this phantom pain in his thighs and the heavy, dead weight of his limp legs is putting strain on his hips. His arms shake as his hands twist in his sheets in an effort to dry them off. 

Of all of his rehabilitation exercises one is the worst.

The one that gets him mentally, that really messes with him, is laying on a plastic table trying to make his thigh just bounce. He’s not even trying to lift his leg at all. It’s just one muscle group, something that’s been flexing since before he was born. An act that was never deliberated. Like breathing, the use of his legs had never been a conscious thought. He has moments, in the night, in the dark and alone like tonight, where he wakes up to turn over - half asleep - and forgets that he can’t move his legs. They twitch weakly, numbly, with the intent and that is what wakes him up fully.  There’s this moment of realization where things become clear and he feels sobered, wide awake, while he lay there. He just stalls. Looks up at the ceiling and tries to fight through this hollow feeling that stings his eyes with burning tears and he  _ hates _ this. This reminder, where even in sleep he can’t manage this without his injury making itself known, loud and clear. Constantly present. Being disappointed in his own disability and his mind for having to work so hard to overcome something as simple as turning over.

So he sits up, slightly with his elbows supporting him, and puts a shaky hand behind his left thigh. It doesn’t feel like he’s lifting his leg. It feels like dead-weight. Rhodey lifts and moves, his calf dragging over his right leg, and pulls it towards him to set it down at an angle, on his stomach now. He lays his head back down on his pillow slowly and stares, almost dissociated, at the wall. He looks over his bookshelf, reading the side-ways title with detachment.  Cataloging his selection and thinking, ‘I need to finish that. Been a while. Maybe I need to start it over? Do I even have the energy to do that?’. The thought of reading, sitting up in bed, light on and glasses perched on his nose, sounded just awful. So he just lies there, and lets his mind white-out. He thinks of nothing, nothing he could keep hold of anyway. Thoughts fade in and out of his mind like wisps of smoke and he doesn’t have the energy to give any of them more than a cursory look.

“Uncle Rhodey?” FRIDAY asks, tentative and soft.

He doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch at her question, it’s a little helpful, actually, to know that she’s always there. He knows that most people don’t see FRIDAY or any of Tony’s other creations as entities. They treat them like a souped-up Alexa or Siri. But he knows, Rhodey knows that Tony’s bots aren’t Artificial Intelligence. They’re people, they’re sentient and can learn and they all have personalities. They’re Tony's children and he feels like their Uncle. JARVIS and his untimely death hit Tony and him both hard. He’s been working on his own system to back up FRIDAY and the other bots once a week to keep memories and newly-learned material intact as well as their respective personalities. 

“Yes, FRI?”

There’s a beat of silence that he reads as hesitance and he turns a little onto his back. His legs are limp and he’s twisted at the hip, looking up at the closest camera in the room. Most people talk to the ceiling like they’re speaking to a ghost or the room. Rhodey prefers to make ‘eye contact’ with FRIDAY when they talk. He’s read baby books. What with Pepper being pregnant, he and Tony both have been making their way through multiple baby books and one of the important things to do with infants is make eye contact. Physical touch is another but her current state limits that. 

Tony’s made an effort to give reassuring touch and eye contact with his bots and their general happiness has increased by at least forty-five percent. Growing minds eat up stimulus and positive interaction and Tony and he have both noticed an increase in socialization and learning since they’ve started. 

“Go ahead, FRIDAY, nothing you have to say is going to make me angry with you.”

She hums, “Okay. Dad is asleep.”

Tony had told her that calling him ‘Boss’ felt like she was a subordinate. He insisted that she was a daughter to him and an important member of the team and the family. She’s been using the term as often as she can since then and has taken to calling other members by more intimate, familial terms. Pepper is ‘Mom’, he is ‘Uncle Rhodey’, Laura encouraged her to be referred to by ‘Mom’ as well and FRIDAY was excited at the notion of having two. FRIDAY considers all of Laura’s kids her siblings and is incredibly excited to be a big sister to Pepper and Tony’s baby that she swears will be a girl.

“That’s good.” Rhodey nods, “But I have a feeling there’s something else.”

“There’s a call for him, from King T’Challa.” FRIDAY admits, sounding frustrated. “He’s very insistent. I told him Dad was sleeping and he asked for you. I figured since you were awake, maybe you could...that is if you want to, I could put him through to you.”

T’Challa. Rhodey isn’t sure what to feel about him. He knows that he had been there in Siberia and while he never showed up on any of the footage from the fight Rhodey definitely feels inclined to blame him, at least in part, for Tony’s brush with death. This could be a good opportunity to clear the air. Rhodey reaches across the last bit of bed to turn on the lamp, something he knows FRIDAY can do but he likes the normalcy. 

“Go ahead, FRI, patch him through. Record for posterity.”

“Okie doke.” FRIDAY quipps and it makes Rhodey smile. She’s picked up a lot of phrases like that from the kids and Parker both.

There is silence for a moment and then, over the speaker systems in the room he hears a tentative, “Colonel Rhodes?”

“Hello, your Highness. For your information: this call is being recorded.”

“That is fine.” T’Challa allows, no sign of irritation at the implication, “I am sorry to bother you at this hour.”

“Is this about the Rogue’s stay with you in Wakanda? Or about how you left Tony to die in a Siberian Hydra bunker?”

A pause, “I was deeply saddened on behalf of Doctor Stark when the video was played. This does not excuse my behavior, but I had been informed at the time that he was, and I’m quoting, ‘Cooling off’. If I had known I would have taken him for medical attention immediately.”

That did make Rhodey feel a little better. Rogers had managed to dupe an entire nation, let alone his supposed ‘friends’. He supposes that he can’t hold this oversight against the King. He’d experienced the death of his own father not too long before Siberia and his own grief had taken shape in the intention to kill his alleged murder: James Barnes. Mistakes were made, that is sure, but he was dealing with backlash not just from Bucharest for damages and his hand in the exacerbation of Roger’s attempt to ‘rescue’ Barnes, but was also receiving a lot of flack from his own people. Specifically those in embassies. 

“While I understand that you were - let’s say lied to, to put it nicely - this is not the sort of thing I would have liked Tony to hear.” Rhodey sniffs, shifting again to sit up against his headboard with a pillow to support his back and continues, moving his legs into a favorable position, “He’s had to deal with a lot of people suddenly coming forward to ‘help’ and apologize. Where was this support when he needed it? And how could you possibly decide that your ‘Oops’ of an apology would be more than a band-aid for the open chest wound of a problem? He knows you have the Rogues. Do you think your apology would mean jack-shit with you harboring known fugitives? Especially when one of them is responsible for attempted murder?”

Another pause and Rhodey thinks that maybe he went a little too far, he’s forgetting that he is speaking to a literal King of a country that, unfortunately in this situation, the rest of the world would benefit from trade with. He doesn’t know much about the King or his rational disposition but Rhodey doesn’t want to be the reason for an embargo between Wakanda and the U.S. He only gives these thoughts a few seconds to linger before he realizes that he doesn’t care about those consequences. Tony’s been through enough - so much, more than anyone ought to go through - and he’d sooner die before he let another person walk all over Tony or take advantage of his kindness.

“All of your points are valid and not without cause. I have behaved in a way that is not just an insult to those I stood with in regards to the Accords but also an insult to my country and my people. I will wait to apologize to Doctor Stark until he deigns to receive me.” He stops again and Rhodey understands that he’s taking his time to collect his thoughts now, “I admit that it has crossed my mind more than once as to whether or not I am actual fit for rule. My father was a true King and his death happened much sooner than any of us had anticipated.  I was made King well before I thought I would be and there is a vast difference between being the Panther and being a King as well. These are not excuses, I’m not trying to defend my actions, but rather, explain them.”

Rhodey nods though he knows that this is strictly audio, “I appreciate your explanation, your Highness. I must know then: was your decision to house the Rogues another uninformed mistake?”

There’s a sigh and it is deep and bone-weary. Rhodey knows this sigh because he’s sighed it more times than he cares to recall. The sound of someone who is so thoroughly exhausted and emotionally wrecked that they’ve accepted what’s to come - whatever it is - just so long as it ends. He can imagine fairly well the type of stress the King is under. He’s a signatory of the Accords, his own father - the late T’Chaka - was a major contributor to its creation. And yet here he is: host of multiple wanted fugitives that acted in defiance of the very laws his father petitioned for. 

Rhodey was more than sure that even before the videos were played for the Rogues that they had been a handful. The lot of them were rather self-inflated and self-important. Rogers obviously being the worst of the bunch, excepting maybe the Maximoff girl. Though, all of them seemed more than keen to blame their own mistakes on Tony, as if his superpower was the ability to inconvenience their lives instead of being a genius. Yes, Rhodey is definitely sympathetic. 

“Yes, I would say it was a mistake. One of many I’ve made of late that shame me and my father’s name. I felt indebted to Mr. Barnes for my attempt to kill him for a crime he did not commit. At least against my father.” A deep breath and another sigh, “I forgot that while he did not kill my father, he is responsible for the death of several other people and their families deserve to see him held accountable. The rest of the brood simply followed, assuming that my allowance of sanctuary Mr. Barnes was extended to the rest of them as well.”

Rhodey laughs, “Sounds about right.”

“After learning about the truth behind the Siberia encounter, coupled with the call for justice from affected countries, I find myself duty-bound to make a change.” T’Challa sucks on his teeth, a sound Rhodey is more than used - a tic that his mother uses frequently, and waits for him to continue, “Luckily, after the Rogues witnessed not just the videos in question and their paperwork for impending lawsuits but also Mr. Roger’s change in attitude, almost all of them are turning themselves in.”

That throws Rhodey for a second and he blinks a few times before clearing his throat to say, “How did Roger’s attitude change?”

“I would rather not go into specifics, as they are offensive and concerning to have behold in someone who was dubbed ‘Captain America’ and as thus is representative - however unintentional - of your country. I will say this: his response was littered with hate-speech and some form of psychopathy, I’m sure.”

Rhodey grinds his teeth at that, “I assure you, your Highness, he is not a paramount of American values. I won’t lie and say they aren’t present, hell, I’ve been the subject of hate-speech before, but Roger’s is outdated and antiquated.”

“I know that and to be honest, I find it to be the most shocking simply because of Wakanda’s previous isolationist culture meant that exposure to racism was pretty much contained to dignitaries and widely not experienced by most of my country.” Rhodey can hear him suck on his teeth again, exhaling sharply through his nose, “To bring the most pressing of things back to the forefront, I intended to let Doctor Stark know that all but Natasha Romanov and Steve Rogers have asked to be handed over to authorities.”

Rhodey feels compelled to ask, because he does sympathize with the young King, “What will this reveal mean for you, for Wakanda?”

“It is my every intention to make it clear that the choice to house these fugitives was solely of my design and without the knowledge of more than a select few that were acting out of loyalty to myself and the crown.” T’Challa sighs that sigh again and pushes on, “I will be accepting any disciplinary action from the Accords Committee as well as providing transport and proper containment of the Rogues while they’re moved for trial.”

Rhodey nods, he feels a kinship with T’Challa. Rhodey has made his fair share of mistakes and still retains guilt from his past transgressions. He can tell from his voice that T’Challa is actually repentant and has accepted his likely punishment to come. This is the difference between T’Challa, Tony, himself, and many others against the Rogues. True guilt and the drive to fix it. 

“You said all but Rogers and Romanov?” Rhodey asks, mostly because he wonders how that’s being handled.

“Rogers was...taken care of my Maximoff, of all people. She put him to sleep and he’s been moved to a mobile cell made from vibranium. It should do its job rather well. As for Romanov, in the ensuing commotion, managed to either hide-away or has escaped the palace entirely. We are looking for her and have sentries around our borders so we are hopeful in her capture.”

Rhodey ponders this for a moment. He knows that Tony, for lack of a better term, threatened Romanov. He made it abundantly clear that should she try to skirt her punishment that he would make it a point to find her himself. Rhodey tells T’Challa as much.

He hums, “Yes, I figured it would be something Doctor Stark would be interested in knowing. That’s part of the reason for my call. I see now that maybe it was preemptive to attempt to call Doctor Stark with this information. I am glad to have relayed it to you, however.”

“And I appreciate you feeling comfortable in talking with me instead. Is there anything you need as of this moment in concern to the Rogues and their transport? Rest assured, Romanov’s skill as a spy will be put to the test. No one can hide from Tony.”

T’Challa chuckles and it sounds genuine and just a hair relieved, “No, I believe we have things handled. If you hear of any uprisings or disquiet in your own country over Roger's arrest, I would find it prudent to inform the Council so they may make the necessary changes in security, but otherwise I was simply wanting Doctor Stark to know of their capture - as it were - and impending trials from me. As a sort of olive branch, you could say. I’m not sure if that phrase works but I have a feeling you understand my intent.”

“I do.” Rhodey smiles, “And I thank you. I will make sure to relay this information to Tony as soon as he’s awake and consumed enough coffee to power that big brain of his.” Rhodey pauses, thinking, and then goes with his gut, “I want you to know that, as a signatory of the Accords and an Avenger, I will support you as best I can with the Council. Bucharest aside, you’ve not actively and officially violated any terms and conditions.”

T’Challa interjects, “I have harbored fugitives.”

“All of which were, and still are, dangers to the world. It can be argued that while you should have made it known, you have kept them from doing more harm, aside from the Raft incident. It is not lying to say that their confinement at the hands of Wakanda has been beneficial and I can hardly blame a man, new to the throne and its responsibilities, to have handled it better considering the circumstances you’ve been subjected to.”

“You are rather free with your sympathy and forgiveness, Colonel.” T’Challa says, speculative.

Rhodey laughs, “Hardly. I’m just as stubborn and likely to hold a grudge as the next person, if not more so. The difference, what really changes my opinion of you here, is both equal parts your intent and owning up to your mistakes. That’s the action of a King, the voice of his people, his country, and it is both unfair and reductive to ignore your penance in favor of focusing on mistakes instead.”

Silence again and this time it is for a much longer stretch than any before. To the point were if it weren’t for his even breathing playing softly in the background he’d think the call had ended.

“You’re very magnanimous, Colonel Rhodes.”

Rhodey’s mouth quirks, “Please, call me Rhodey.”

-

“Eddie Brock, you absolute legend.” Tony says, smile honest and real while he reaches to shake the man’s hand. He only winces a little at the pull of pain it sparks across his ribs and back. He’s not sure if Brock has noticed. Eddie didn’t until Venom pointed it out while, in the same breath, mentioning that Stark is very pretty. Tony continues, waving the disheveled man to a seat before sitting gingerly himself, “I’ve gotta say, I half-expected to have read an article from you about my company by now.”

“I make it a habit to talk to someone higher up on the food-chain.” 

_ ‘Food?’  _ Venom asks. 

Eddie responds with a sharp,  _ ‘No, we’re working. This is work. I said we’d get lunch after.’ _

“I thought you were out of the game. Your last expose landed you in the unemployment line.” Tony watches his face for any kind of tell, “Shame really. We could use more journalists like yourself. Everhart is another good example.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Doctor Stark.” Eddie manages, thrown for a moment. “You recently released several videos online about your...confrontation in Siberia.”

Tony tsks and shakes a finger at him, “I didn’t release those. My CEO did.”

“Your ex-?”

“Ex-girlfriend, I suppose, but we parted amicably. I would also appreciate her being represented as my CEO. Her designation in my company isn’t an extension of myself. That beautiful woman runs my company and handles me. She’s not an accessory.” 

_ ‘I like him.’  _ Venom purrs,  _ ‘He actually appreciates his partner.’ _

Eddie tries not to sigh anywhere else but internally,  _ ‘I do appreciate you. Shush.” _

_ ‘You shush.’  _

“I will make sure to afford her the titles she’s earned. You’re skirting the topic. Why do you think your CEO released those videos and what is your opinion the Rogue’s involvement in the dubbed ‘Civil War’? Do you intend to pay for their representation when they’re brought before court?”

Tony laughs and leans back in his chair slowly, folding his hands in his lap, “My CEO - the best in the world, write that down - felt that the public had a right to know what Steve Rogers was actually fighting for. He was offered, well before the...confrontation in Siberia, the chance to be effectively pardoned and brought back, charges minimal internationally and forgiven state-side.  As for my opinion on the Civil War and the Rogue’s actions, I feel that my dedication to not only the Accords and the adherence to their laws as well as my attempt to arrest them at the airport is rather indicative of my stance. They broke laws, people died as a result, costly damages were inflicted, and terror reigned. By definition they were terrorists.  As for their representation: it will be provided but not by myself. I’m not responsible for them and to imply so is insulting, frankly.”

Eddie nodded once, acquiescing, this wasn’t news to him or most other media outlets. Stark has been a staunch supporter of oversight and of the Council. This comes as no surprise so he moves on to the hard-hitter questions, ignoring Venom’s wax-poetic about how beautiful Doctor Stark's eyelashes are, “Did you find it hard to fight against people who had previously been your teammates?”

Stark laughs but it sounds hollow and sad, it makes something in Eddie rise up like an old-fashioned need to protect. He blames Venom for that one as Stark opens up, “I was never really considered a part of the ‘Team’. I think that, to them, I was a bank, a mechanic, someone who cleaned up the mess. I was only tolerated for what I could give. Not ever as an equal, but as something to be used and then set aside again.”

_ ‘Can we kill them?’  _ Venom asks, one part serious and another part curious.

_ ‘No.’  _ Eddie thinks, and then,  _ ‘Maybe. BUT, I say when.’ _

Eddie pushes on, “On the tapes it’s shown that after watching your parent’s deaths you attack Rogers instead of Barnes - the man responsible. Why is that?”

Stark’s eyes get a little unfocused and suspiciously shiny with what Eddie believes may be tears. Tony clears his throat, looking at a point over Eddie’s shoulder rather than making eye contact. It’s vulnerable and he can see the hurt written across his face, too fresh and new to be hidden properly. 

“Brock, have you ever loved someone - and not just romantic love, any kind of love - and it’s like fresh air. Like taking a nice long drink of water when you’re the thirstiest you’ve ever been. Where you’re desperate to do whatever you can to please them, to make them happy, because all you’ve known is that, for the most part, people and their friendship are bought not earned. Like nothing you do could possibly be enough, your personality, your mind, who you are is pocket change next to what you could just  _ buy _ .

And even though you’ve been duped before, even though it’s the same song and dance, they still manage to take you for all you’ve got - emotionally, physically, mentally - because they see you as something to own, not someone to know. Rogers was the biggest perpetrator of this. He used me and my resources for months upon months to finance his quest to find the man who killed my parents. Who choked the life out of my mother. He used my money, my technology, my influence, to track down the person who orphaned me. Barnes was used, like me, just differently and arguably much worse than I was. But Rogers? Rogers knew and did it anyway.”

That’s a lot for Eddie to digest. Him and Venom both. Eddie’s been used before, maybe not to that extent, but in his past relationships he’s experienced betrayal. Cheating, stealing, and lying. Venom feels that, too. The soul-crushing feeling of hurt. Neither of them can really and truly empathize with the gravity of Roger’s deception, but they can sympathize. It makes something ugly rise up in Eddie, dark and foul - like Venom - and the mental power he has to use to focus on not sweeping Stark up into a hug is more than he can spare. 

He continues, “So you don’t hold any ill will for Barnes?”

“This is an exclusive for you alone, Brock. Wanda Maximoff was a willing Hydra participant. She had a large hand in his creation. She has a specialty in influencing the mind. What she made me see when we first encountered them, what I saw, in congruence with the influence the staff had on Bruce, me, and Ultron's program, is what corrupted his original purpose. Her magic, her manipulations and that scepter is what tainted Ultron. Wanda Maximoff did these things of her own volition.  James Barnes was under the influence of Hydra for years. He was used like I was, just in a different way. I would even go so far as to argue that his hand in Bucharest’s shit show was instinct and survival - though not necessarily excusable - and was facilitated in large part by Steve Rogers. A man who has shown capable of lying to supposed teammates as well as his own best friend: Barnes. Barnes didn’t kill my parents. The Winter Soldier did. Hydra did.”

“And your subsequent fight with the two of them?”

Stark shrugs, “I assume that Barnes was acting on instinct. Triggered, maybe. I wasn’t fighting to kill, but you can see that Rogers was. I can’t blame Barnes anymore than you can blame a veteran or a victim for their PTSD.” Stark sighs and runs a hand over his face, solemn expression replaced with a bright smile, “Let’s lighten the mood a bit and get some grub. I’m thinking burgers. Are you thinking burgers?"

_ ‘Yes!’  _ Venom says.

Eddie is inclined to agree.


	5. Imprisonment and Freedom: The Bittersweet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***WARNING***
> 
> Potential triggers: attempted suicide, psychopathy and disturbing thoughts, racism
> 
> The views expressed by Steve Rogers in this fic are NOT indicative of my own. This is how I've built his character.

Psychological and Danger Evaluation

Subject - Wanda Maximoff /no living relatives/ released into Facility care after voluntarily turning herself in.

Diagnosis: 

  * Psychopathy 
  * Delusions of Grandeur, known to shift blame
  * Guilty of influencing, projecting, and destroying minds at will (both unintentionally and intentionally)
  * Possible Borderline Personality Disorder
  * Suicidal (On constant watch)



Containment:

  * Not to be housed with any other inmates 
  * Officers and other personnel to be outside of effect zone excepting when providing food, checking for structure anomalies, and checking the collar for any issues.
  * For the subject’s safety, no sharp implements are to be allowed in the subject's cell. If it is believed that the subject is intending to or in progress of self-harm and/or suicidal tendencies subject will be strapped to their bed and fed and hydrated both through feeding tube and IV fluids.
  * Do not, under any circumstances, engage subject in conversation unless cleared to do so by majority rule of three to five Class B or higher personnel.
  * 1 (one) book is to be provided when subject finishes the last one. Paperback only.
  * Subject to be tranquilized when cleaning the cell is necessary, washing the bed things and clothes on a bi-monthly cycle. (Addendum: clothes that can be turned into a straight jacket. See Interview Log 003 via remote communications for detail.)
  * If any officers, soldiers, or observers experience negative responses (I.E. Nightmares, bouts of rage, sudden sobbing, or homicidal behavior they are to report to Class-B personnel or higher for evaluation, psychological help, and reassigned.) 
  * Medication for psychosis, anxiety, and a sedative (only to be given when agitated and not in the company of a visitor) are to be integrated into the food the subject receives. Subject with not be able to leave the food until it is all consumed. 



Description:

Wanda Maximoff is a known willing Hydra operative that claims to have defected to the Avengers after the advent of the entity known as Ultron (Deceased/Neutralized). She is small in stature and weight. Weighing in at 115 pounds with a height of 5”0’. She has red hair, dark eyes that have a near-constant red hue, and is showing signs of degradation one may find if someone was slowly burning from the inside out. 

Subject claims their parents were killed in a skirmish during Sokovia’s Civil War via bombing. Subject has claimed that an additional bomb had trapped them in their home for two days. Subject has a known history of hatred and vengeance where Tony Stark (aka Iron Man) is involved (No records show legal or illegal trade between the government or either side of the Civil War in Sokovia, it has been decided that the bomb used was a knock-off and defective).

Reports have shown that her power has been contained inside Ms. Maximoff. She can no longer affect others with her power as per word of the android Vision. Initially, this was the catalyst to turning herself in. Continued magic-suppression (both done by the Vision and via her collar, as per subject’s request) has triggered intermittent but strong bouts of psychopathy. Subject goes back and forth between extreme hostility - focused on any the subject believes has wronged her - and then sudden apathy and depression.

Subject is mulish most of the time (flagged as a dissociated state). Prone to rage and broken sobbing. Outside sources say that she no longer possesses the ability to harm others and can no longer influence the minds of others. Claiming that her power has been focused inward, causing great distress while in the presence of someone - that she can feel their pain - and has asked via speaking with audible difficulty, requesting to keep the collar on and be sedated as often as possible to, and I quote, “Please, please, please, make the feelings go away! I don’t want them anymore, take this from me”.

Request denied for the moment. Part of her conviction and prison sentence includes her being forced to hear the recount of survivors of her own past machinations. 

When survivors request to speak with the Subject, two security personnel are to be with the visitors at all times on the other side of the glass and one Class-B personnel is to be in the room with the subject to strap her to the chair and watch for abnormalities until the visit is over. Upon which civilians are to be escorted out and a tranquilizer used on the Subject to be removed from restrictive gear and moved to their bed for the safety of any personnel with the subject in the cell.

Interview Log 001 - Day 1 (one) of containment.

Dr. Siobhan: Hello, Ms. Maximoff. How are you feeling today?

Subject: No. *Said with seemingly great trouble and clenched teeth*

Dr. Siobhan: No, what?

Subject: *Shakes her head violently.*

Dr. Siobhan: Ms. Maximoff, we cannot help you if you do not speak. 

Subject: *Mimes writing.*

Dr. Siohban: Would you like to speak via writings?

SubjectL *Nods once and then lays down, curled into the fetal position, seemingly sobbing.*

Subject given small tablet with no capability to use for anything other than answering questions and responding through text. Subject sets it down and doesn’t investigate object. Victims come in droves, some of them family members of deceased or severely disabled. She doesn’t speak back to them. Subject appears to listen and at the end of every session is returned to her bed and awakens some time later to simply stare at the wall. She sometimes sobs, but otherwise face remains impassive but teary. 

Interview Log 002 - Day 3 (three)

Dr. Siobhan: Ms. Maximoff could you use your tablet to speak with me, please?

Subject: *Picks up tablet and types.* Yes.

Dr. Siobhan: Very good. Why, may I ask, do you insist on not speaking?

Subject: It bubbles up when I talk.

Dr. Siobhan: What ‘bubbles’ up?”

Subject: The Red. It burns me. It hurts. I’m not allowed to talk anymore. Only listen.

Dr. Siobhan: Is this a result of your collar? Did you feel this way before arriving at our facility?

Subject: Yes. When Vision turned my power inward I could feel it burning me.

Dr. Siobhan: Does the sedation help?

Subject: Yes. Want to be sedated all times. Please please please pleas

Dr. Siobhan: I will definitely request that for you but you do know that when speaking with your victims, you will be fully sober and still strapped down?

Subject: No! Their pain makes me burn faster. I can feel it all. It feels like my own. Please let me sleep just let me sleep.

Dr. Siobhan: You know that isn’t a part of your sentence. Those people have a right to confront you. 

Subject: And I have right not to listen! It was my right, my work, mine, to kill Stark. But I am here and he is free. How fair?

Dr. Siobhan: You’ve been given both proof of documentation and testimony stating that both bombs that hit your house were knock-offs and sold by Hydra.

Subject: Lie. All lies. I know what I saw.

Dr. Siobhan: Do you believe that you want to blame Tony Stark because if you do not that means your brother’s death could have been avoided?

Subject: No! He killed whole family! I saw him do it! His blood on their hands. Murderer!

Dr. Siobhan: Please, calm yourself, Ms. Maximoff

Subject: He is a demon! King of all hells. He has you all fooled!!!!!

Interview terminated. Sedation requested. Request Granted.

Interview 003 - Day 7 (seven)

Dr. Siobhan: Are you feeling better today, Ms. Maximoff?

Subject: Stop.

Dr. Siobhan: Stop, what. Ms. Maximoff?

Subject: No more.

Dr. Siobhan: You don’t want to talk anymore?

Subject: Don’t want anything anymore.

Subject then throws the tablet around the room, shattering it against three different walls before dislodging a piece and slitting her wrists open with jagged piece. She seems to feel very little and satisfied with herself, sits down on the floor and continues to bleed out. Dr. Siobhan sends the two outer guards in. She is laid down, staunching the blood as best they can while medical rushes into the cell. Subject taken into surgery to repair veins, tendons, and stitch wounds. Subject's room is proofed against future attempts. Strapped down to her bed and kept under strict observation by security personnel and at least one doctor at all times. 

Sedation and change in pre-prescribed medication requested. Request Granted. 

Sorcerer Supreme requested for magical evaluation. Request granted.

-

Steven Strange couldn’t quite say that he was surprised to be contacted by the Magical Being Containment Facility. He’s been called before, but the surprise was that they needed help with Wanda Maximoff. The Hydra operative responsible for numerous man-hunts, deaths, human rights violations, and then pleads with the Council for her detainment in the MBCF. The women who was really responsible for the corruption and subsequent ‘birth’ of the AI known as Ultron. The women who has broken more magical commandments then any other magic user in known history; exception of Dark Phoenix and Apocalypse. 

He portals in easily to the facility and is handed a packet in a file. Three interviews to date. First one request of other forms of communication. The second one being gifted a tablet to type responses. This is where it gets interesting and Dr. Strange wonders how her psychosis had been able to run unchecked by the Avengers. Then he remembers Steve’s treatment of her and how his ‘team’ had fallen in behind him. That they were all subject to her manipulations; whether they be purposeful or not. Only experiencing one instance of benign, non-self-serving humanity when turning herself in. He has his own ideas on what triggered that. 

Strange has seen her records since her start in HYDRA. She was gifted magic, that is sure, however, it isn’t any kind of magic someone should possess. It’s a miracle that it’s existed within her for as long as it has. An infinity stone is a powerful object and to use it to mutate non-mutant DNA has proven to be fatal in the 80th percentile. Even then, like Extremis, the other 15 percent have perished - usually by implosion - soon after use. The magic within Ms. Maximoff was evil. Red and vicious. Most certainly alive in it’s own right with a manner of intelligence. Ever since the confirmation from the Vision and his strapping down of her power, Strange knew it was going to be a problem. This magic is poison and left with nowhere to go it will find ways to attempt to release itself. Even if that means the destruction of its current host. 

Dr. Siobhan gives him a chance to read over their findings and documentation. It had been decided by the Council to put her in a magical-care facility. Deemed the only place currently that has had an 85 percent success of containing both violent entities and possessed ones. The doctor looks increasingly more nervous as he reads the most recent of Interviews. 

“It says here that she tried to kill herself, yet in the interview before it she exhibits psychopathic delusional behavior towards Doctor Stark. What are your thoughts on this?”

Doctor Siobhan takes a deep breath and nods, “Yes, we are well aware of her...mood swings and her inconsistent behavior. As stated in the beginning, we posit that she may have a rather strong case of Borderline Personality Disorder. We aren’t quite positive on if that is a product of traumas, hereditary transmission, or the magic within her exacerbating a much more controlled version of illness.”

“And is she still made to be available for victims and the like to confront her?”

“Not since the attempted suicide. We’ve upped her psychosis meds and kept her on light sedation via intravenous drip with a stronger anxiety medication. She’s still strapped to the bed. We move her once every three hours to go to the bathroom or for a walk about the room to prevent bed sores and muscle loss. Feeding is done through a tube and we’re keeping her hydrated with her sedation mix.”

Strange nods once, this seems to be the best solution, “From what I’ve gathered, even after making her practically non-responsive and sedated, you still worry about the safety of your security detail and yourself.”

“Yes.” She says, almost vehemently, “Whatever her power is doing inside her is beginning to act on it’s own. She is sedated enough to make someone twice her weight fatigued but she still continues to twitch, almost snapping her wrists against the restraints, without seeming to do so on her own. It acts by itself even when she’s sleeping.” She swallows and looks legitimately frightened. “Whatever her magic is, whatever it is doing, is trying to take over her brain. It’s presence and current fluctuations have forced me to regularly switch out guards.”

Stephen clicks his tongue, “Nightmares - of space- and reoccurring? Indescribable fear? The need to make physical contact with Ms. Maximoff?”

“Well, yes.” She sputters. “How did you know that?”

“The magic the resides within Ms.Maximoff, to my belief and those of my colleagues, is that her powers, while gifted by the Mind Stone, was corrupted. The Mind Stone is only permanently usable by the one who holds it. The power is not to be ‘shared’ or replicated. In doing so, I believe, it created a malevolent, bastardization of that power.”

Doctor Siobhan pales, gulps down on reflects even though her mouth is dry, and asks, “Do you think you can remove it?”

“I think that putting Ms. Maximoff’s brain into a sort of blank state, through sedation as well as being strapped down, that removal of the magic in its entirety is possible.” He puts up a hand to stop the Doctor’s premature elation, “I do, however, think that it is also possible that I can remove only most of it. Magic is within all of us, Doctor, and no matter how corrupted that magic was and is, there will always be a mark of it within her - within her soul.”

She looks contemplative, and then asks for clarification, “Would that leave her as a threat, still?”

“Unlikely. From what Vision has told me, he bound her magic, at least the most hostile portions of it. Instead of being able to act through her and channel it’s tainted magic by tampering with her emotions, specifically her rage. Without that outlet and a body capable of dispersing destruction and corruption, it is simply trying to find another host.”  Strange takes a breath and sighs before continuing, “That is why it appears that she is, and to quote the report, ‘burning from the inside out’. I believe that the malignant evil of her magic is parasitic in nature. If she continues as she has been or if no new host is introduced, it is possible that it is consuming her body over time to sustain itself.”

“So, as a curiosity, could it be argued that her actions were not her own?"

He shakes his head, “No. She was fully cognizant of her actions when she joined HYDRA. Her rage and pain are still her own. The magic within her just feeds off of that. Possibly cultivates it, but not because there is nothing malignant there. It just fans the flames, as it were. Flames that would have spread regardless of internal, parasitic influence.”

“Do you think you can take it? Take care of it?”

Strange just smiles, “I do believe I can. Darkness cannot abide the light, Doctor Siobhan, darkness is a set scale. Light is stronger and I’ve fought the darkness long enough to know that while the dark may inspire fear, darkness fears above all else, is light.”

-

Steve wakes up in a cell.

None of his belongings, no bed, in prison-wear garb, and a concrete outcropping that he imagines is supposed to act as a bed and a sitting area. There is a small toilet, cemented to the floor with a sink affixed to the tank of the toilet. His head is pounding. It all comes back to him, now. He feels drugged, almost, but not quite. It reminds him of the feeling he had coming out of Wanda’s spell. That infuriates him.  Steve thought out of all of them he would have the strongest support out of the rest of them. He’d promise to bring her Stark, let her kill him, inflict whatever misery she wished, and they’d stage it as some sort of accident. Much like how his parent’s murders had been covered up. It would be easy, vengeance would be sweet, and when the world needed a protector, when they realized they needed  _ him _ , they would come crawling back to him, licking his boots and pledging themselves to his glory. Steve could, would, and will destroy any who oppose him. He will salt the very earth they walk on.

The research that he had done since he woke up was pretty enlightening. Fighting HYDRA had been a mistake. What was so different from the Accords and HYDRA? Both forces of evil to leash them and turn them into nothing more than dogs? Wanda probably already had her collar. All the better.

HYDRA and it’s methods were crude and drew unnecessary attention, that was for sure. But what was wrong with it could easily be countered with good leadership, and boy was Steve a good leader. He’d already been labeled a terrorist and and demonized - unjustly, he might add - by the very country that had made them. Steve may have been naive in his youth. Desperate to go into the Army. But even then, looking back, he had been hungry for power. After doing his best to exert his authority over officers above him in rank and made his name known. Held onto that title of Captain America even though he’d hardly put the time in. No, he’d made sure that people would recognize his power. ‘Captain’ wasn’t for him. It was for others to know to defer to him.

He never crashed that plane. Not on purpose. His talk with Peggy was just in case he survived. He tried for so long to come across as that sad but cute puppy; someone that would make hearts melt and give him what he wanted. The plane had malfunctioned, and Steve was always honest with himself, didn’t even know how to land the damn thing. So yeah, he made it seem purposeful. And what had that got him? Thrown 70 years into the future. But people were always and will always be easily manipulated. 

Acting like he didn’t quite understand technology was easy. It was a marvel, that’s for sure, but it was a whole other playground. Full of information and possibilities. He’d found his niche. He’d learned how to phrase things just right to be ambiguous while at the same time subtly implying direct action. He knew his best shot in the current political climate was the Republican party and their more...radical factions. He’d missed the Civil Rights movement, something he laments. America stood for power. He stood for power. The people that needed most protection were white men and, to a lesser degree, white women. 

War is delight. War is blood and sweat and the feeling, that oh-so wonderful feeling, of a life being extinguished by your very own hands. So many convenient excuses. So many deaths with no questions asked. Erksine was so easy to fool. He may have been denied his right to that power before, but oh, after that serum he wasn’t just cunning. Now he had brute strength. And what better a person than one that could not just think but also kill. How unfortunate it was now for the same level of slaughter to be carried out my drones and missiles. No more bloodlust. Watching someone die from hundreds of miles away with the click of a button really took the fun out of it. 

And then, like a godsend, the Avengers.

It felt like being alive again. Fighting aliens, unforgiving and so easy to be seen as a savior. Commanding those around him was just as laughable as it was delicious. They see Captain America and think of freedom. Representation. Paragon of truth and righteousness. And the Right Wing ate that shit up like it was a veritable thanksgiving feast. A few implications here, a few subtle undertones there, and hello cult following.

Wanda had been a truly unexpected hiccup in his plans. Steve had thought that he had her on a tight leash. It was foolish to not take Vision’s influence on her seriously. But an android with the emotional intelligence of a toddler and an unstable woman? That had seemed just low-brow enough to create its own submissive behavior. She was unstable. He knew that. Did he care? Maybe, but not enough to worry about at the time. No, he knew that as long as he kept placating her, kept treating her and calling her a child, she’d eventually fall in line like children do. But he had forgotten one thing about Vision.

He was a product of Tony Stark. 

Stark was just as cunning as Steve and he wasn’t afraid to admit that Tony was smarter than him in most areas. Manipulation was not one of them. He’d known how to play Tony from their first interaction. Build up a ‘wall’ and paint it to look like self-doubt and good-ol’-boy charm. Bring down that wall bit by bit to reveal what Steve had wanted Tony to see. And that had worked for so long!  Steve had so many people fooled that the DC incident was for the greater good. He knew better because he planned it. After seeing Bucky again, after so long, after so many years, oh. The first person to fool. The first person to stick up for him, unknowingly supporting Steve’s agenda. God, he loved him. Romantically? No, Steve wasn’t sure he’d ever have that kind of love. He loved the experience. He loved that gratification knowing that people adored him. He loved the attention.

But now even Bucky had left his side. And that was inexcusable. An attack on Steve himself. A dismissal. A betrayal. But there was still a way to keep Bucky. There was still a way to make him compliant and loyal. Sure, it might diminish the truthfulness - the tone - of his follower but that could be leveraged. Use those words on him a few times. Turn that key. Make him commit atrocities that would break any man. Horrors and their delights to fuel nightmares for centuries more. Bucky would eventually come back to his side.

All he needed was a little push.

-

This was the third time in the last hour that Tony had found himself walking into his workshop for something, anything, any spark of an idea. And he had a lot of them. He guesses that it’s not that he needs an idea, more like the thought of starting one makes him so exhausted that he just keeps turning around, leaving to his penthouse, and staring into the refrigerator over and over as if something new would spawn. 

FRIDAY was trying to be helpful. She was asking what groceries he’d like ordered to stock the fridge. Brought up some menus of his favorite places. Had Carl Sagan’s  _ Cosmos: A Personal Voyage  _ playing in the background and on speaker wherever he went. See, Tony had already built Rhodey’s new legs. Mach 1, he calls it. Each new prosthetic will be tailored to where he is at in his physical therapy. He’d set up Laura and the kids with their own floor full of gadgets and toys. Stocked with anything the could need so they would never want for anything.

The same level of single-minded purpose he put into his daughter’s room. He and Pep may be split up but that didn’t mean they couldn’t co-parent. Pepper had already decided to live in the tower with Laura and the kids. He wasn’t jealous of that. There was no betrayal felt. He envied her love, though. Loving someone, being with them, sharing in affection and intimacy. He missed those things, but didn’t begrudge her. She was the mother of his unborn child. A legacy, if she ever wanted it when she grew up.

Tony had made a promise to himself that he wouldn’t be his father. The man certainly had plenty of check marks in the pro and con columns but a good amount of his pros were not on being a family man, definitely not a good father. He’s heard people say that they’ve become their parents. This was something he was desperately hoping wouldn’t befall him. His real family, Rhodey, Pepper, Happy, and now Laura and the kids weren’t afraid to show their love. They weren’t scared of him, maybe for him, but never of him. They assured him that if he was like his father he would have never stopped weapons manufacturing. That he wouldn’t bother with the minute detail of encroaching fatherhood.

The whole tower was baby-proofed at this point. FRIDAY’s main purpose now was split between himself and his projects and the other half on the kids and his future daughter. Laura turned down the idea of sub-dermal tracking for a while but after hearing his stories of kidnappings and attempts on his life, after learning about Afghanistan and Siberia and every other horror, she’d agreed. The program was built for emergency codes only and require a two-person password input to activate the beacon.

Rhodey and he both were reading any credible baby book they could. They spent hours piecing together a rather elaborate crib that Pepper had picked and conceded on painting it red and gold with a little, fake Arc Reactor night light. She thought it was cute, teared up a bit and said that she would feel like he was with her even at night in bed. Tony never thought he would have this chance and he wishes he had spent more of his younger years focused on this, a family, rather than partying and going 90 on some back road towards inevitable death. He may not live to see her graduate but he would live long enough to see her. For her to know him, even if for a little bit.

He hoped that she’d remember him when he’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did remove the eddie brock/tony stark relationship as romantic because I felt that I was pushing for that and wanted any relationship tony has to be something he's tested, that he knows the ins and outs of. More importantly: that this story is all about Tony's Glow Up. His new family. The New Avengers. Figuring out how to handle Steve and Annihilation.  
> We will touch lightly on the new threat soon.
> 
> I was recently made aware of my own betrayal of sorts recently and I decided that my focus should be on myself and the people who love me for who i am. Support network and healthy coping skills. 
> 
> There is plenty to look forward to. And if a relationship is borne from it, then so be it.
> 
> PLease feel free to point out mistakes. still no beta. can't promise they'll be fixed right then but I'll get to it.


End file.
